Movie Review: Monster In Law (2005) seen on Netflix

Comedy; some scenes may be unsuitable for young children; minor sexual dialogue, brief alcohol and drug use, and coarse language

This movie follows a woman who goes to great lengths to sabotage her son’s wedding as she is not fond of the bride due to her lack of wealth in comparison to them.

This is one of those movies that I was drawn into after seeing the trailer. To me, it was the classic trope of upper class mother disapproves of her son’s bride to be as she doesn’t measure up to their standards of living due to not having as much wealth as the family and therefore being seen as unworthy to be married to their son/daughter. The tiny bit of credit I have to give this movie comes from that very fact. To be fair, it lived up to it’s expectations as far as what I thought the plot would be as throughout this movie, the mother of the groom is shown to do everything in her power to ensure the wedding does not happen due to her son’s love interest being low on money. Add this to the fact that throughout the film, the mother shows signs of the person I used to be a long time ago, having had severe anxiety attacks that cause me to scream blue murder and break down and this unfortunately sums up all of the positive things I have to say about this movie.

As far as the fails within this movie are concerned, that’s a whole different story. Aside from what was already mentioned, there were no more high points or positive points to be discussed as this movie was no good otherwise. For one thing, it took up to a half an hour into the movie to get to the actual plot of the movie, which was her meeting his mother, and then another three or four scenes after that for the mother to start her plan to ruin the wedding. I will say this. Upon seeing the trailer for this movie, Jane Fonda’s character was the biggest draw as she seemed to make the plot more interesting with her plans of ruining the wedding as she disapproves of the bride. However, this part of the movie did not live up to expectations as she is shown to be defeated easily, having even lost her own job early on the film without even a single word to address her firing. I would think a woman who is supposedly a big shot would have her lawyers sue the company or at least argue with her side of the story. Instead, she quietly leaves without a word. On a different note, I was disappointed at the lack of intimacy in this movie as it’s supposed to be a rom com. All of the intimacy is very short and despite a few kisses throughout the movie, there was no actual love scenes in a movie which is supposed to specifically be about love according to the genre.

I’ve said this before and I will say it again. The biggest problem in any movie is the casting of Jennifer Lopez. Personally, I do not like her. As I talked about in my review of The Boy Next Door, the biggest problem I have with her is that she is seen by a lot of people to be this gorgeous woman, (my mother is guilty of thinking this,) when really she is just above average. There’s nothing attractive about her and yet everybody else seems to think she’s the hottest person in the world. To make matters worse, in this movie, she is the bride so that means the guy was marrying her. There was a scene near the end of the movie where the wedding is almost cancelled and though they went ahead with it anyway, I would consider myself lucky to not have to marry a woman who thinks a lot of herself in that department when clearly I have seen better. In my mind, she is given too much praise for her supposed good looks when she doesn’t have any. I suppose it’s a good thing there was no romance scenes in this movie because I’m pretty sure she would have been involved in it. This is what gave The Boy Next Door it’s low rating, the fact that she had sex in that movie which didn’t even positively effect my interest level though it was a good movie otherwise. The fact is that anything with her negatively effects the rating of any movie. There were a couple of scenes that I could have counted enough to maybe boost the rating a bit, (maybe a 5 out of 10 would have been generous,) but then I realize that they chose her to once again be someone’s love interest when there are clearly a ton of better actresses to choose from, ones who I find hot and who are worthy to play the character.

It’s movies like these where the best part is the end credits. Some movies just don’t live up to the hype and aren’t worth watching. I know I’m bound to find some that are like this and when I do, I will give each one of them the same treatment….a very harsh treatment and I will do so with a low rating. This movie is not recommended at all.

Movie rating: 0 out of 10

Next movie review TBD