A Toda Madre

Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen are a great comedy team. In fact, the best part of Guilt Trip is when the credits are rolling at the end, and there are several scenes that the two of them apparently improvised during the filming. If the whole movie had been as entertaining as those outtakes, I would have given it a "10."

Unfortunately, the makers of Guilt Trip appear to believe that a movie requires a plot, and sadly, this one was clunky. For a comedy film to work, you either have to completely put reality aside (Blazing Saddles or Rocky Horror Picture Show), or somehow believe an unbelievable story (Airplane or the Blues Brothers). This film didn't fall into either category. The plot just wasn't strong enough to support the premise that any son would be crazy enough to take his mother on a long business trip with him, and there was no reason why he kept bringing her to all his business appointments. And his mother's nutty revealing of her deepest family secret, and her insane baby-naming system, were clearly tossed in just to provide somewhere for this film to go.

Don't get me wrong. I'd really like Streisand and Rogen to do another road trip together. But next time, let's just say that space aliens abducted them and forced them to travel together. And let both of the stars ad lib their way through the adventure. I'd pay to see that one.

The Paramount marketing department would have you think this film is a wacky laugh fest. Which is a pity, since more people would enjoy the film if their expectations were different. They go in thinking the film is one way. When in reality, it's a whole other thing. The film is much more touching, funny, and real. I cared about the two main characters, and how they interacted. I was interested in what was at stake for them. For me, the smaller moments of the film made it enjoyable. It was delightful to see Streisand and Rogen working off each other like they have known each other for years. Be sure to stay for the credits to see just how well they played off each other.

"You want to drive cross-country in a car with me?" Joyce Brewster (Barbra Streisand)

Trust me –you don't want to take this trip. The problem with The Guilt Trip is that most of the lame comedy takes place in a subcompact car with two not very interesting characters, a Jewish mother, Joyce (Streisand), and her son, Andrew (Seth Rogen). You will want to get out as soon as you can, and you will feel guilt for wasting 95 minutes.

Not that more of that clichéd Jewish guilt wouldn't have been welcomed after the first act's slow setup (Andy asking mom to join him on a trip out West). Not even those stops along the way would relieve your boredom, given the pedestrian set pieces in a strip bar, a steak house, and a casino, among other seemingly random choices except that inventor Andrew visits those cities to hawk his edible cleaning product.

You can amuse yourself by counting the number of product placements ("They know me at The Gap!"), some from K Mart, Costco, Budget Rental Cars, and other businesses. For those companies, their products come off very well from Andrew's tepid pitch. Only when he finds his selling voice, does the film come alive and Rogen awakens from a sleepy first hour for him.

Making comedies is a Las Vegas gamble: Witness the uneven but far more amusing This is 40, a Judd Apatow production that at least tries to be witty about social issues for aging youngsters. The Guilt Trip tries one bit—the overbearing Jewish mother and wimpy son—and doesn't get it right (Whatever happened to that Oriental girl?").

Now I'm feeling guilty.

How is it possible that when you put together an esteemed actress with the ambassador of a new generation comedy that you get a second rate movie? For starters this film started off as a wannabe comedy. It was as if the cast were trying their hardest to make us laugh but it just did not work. The obsessive neurotic mother with the geeky kind of son was somewhat off for laughs.

Then the conversation developed, the story unfolded but despite the charm and warmth it conveyed as well as being engaging, it never really went beyond making the audience smile, so the supposed comedy never happened which is a shame as the ingredients were there.

Aside from her near-cameo appearances in two ensemble comedies, Barbra Streisand has not starred in a movie in sixteen long years, not since 1996's "The Mirror Has Two Faces" which she also directed. Her output as an actress has been meager since around 1980 when she started directing films, building houses and returning to the concert stage periodically, so it was with both great anticipation and some trepidation that I saw this light- hearted 2012 comedy. What a relief to find she hasn't missed a beat in her sharp comedy timing. I think she's terrific as Joyce Brewster, the energetically overbearing mother of Andy, an organic chemical engineer who long ago moved to California and has recently invented a cleaning solution he is pitching to various store chains headquartered across the country. He plans a weekend visit with Joyce in New Jersey, but upon an intriguing discovery about her past, he invites her on an eight-day cross-country road trip with him.

As directed by Anne Fletcher ("The Proposal") and written by Dan Fogelman (the underrated "Crazy Stupid Love") who based his script on his own late mother, the film is about how their two mismatched personalities unsurprisingly clash at every stop as their relationship twists and turns with each new humiliation for Andy and each new revelation for the both of them, a few of them quite poignant. The film is at its comedic best when she and co-star Seth Rogen as Andy volley back and forth with her well-meaning thoughts and antics at odds with his spiky annoyance at anything she says or does. Rogen plays against type as the coiled-up Andy since his stoner-dude personality has been the basis of much of his previous comedy. Here he needs to show some dramatic gravity (as he did earlier this year in "Take This Waltz") and again does surprisingly well when necessary. There is a confrontation scene between the two characters that I wish could have gone on a bit longer and deeper than it did, but he manages to bring a real edge to the film in ways I didn't quite expect from him.

Of course there are predictable comedy pieces that also work like a steak-eating contest in Texas where Joyce has to down a fifty-ounce piece of beef in an hour to avoid a $100 tab. There's also quite a supporting cast here, but like Streisand movies of yore, the familiar actors contribute moments that amount to nearly bit parts. Kathy Najimy and Miriam Margolyes are among Joyce's Weight Watchers friends in a quick dinner scene early in the story, while Adam Scott and Ari Graynor show up at the very end of the road trip in San Francisco. In between are appearances by Brett Cullen as a cowboy who becomes smitten with Joyce during the eating contest and Nora Dunn as an officious HSN TV hostess. But that's fine since Rogen really lets Streisand dominate the movie all the way from pushing off potential suitors at a mature singles mixer to getting into the wrong car at a mini-mart pit-stop to getting drunk in a motel bar to sharing her innocently ignorant perceptions of stereotypes. This is only her 19th film since her extraordinary debut in "Funny Girl" 44 years ago, reason enough to enjoy the warm, accomplished performance she gives here.