Mark Waters’s “Mother of the Bride” is another of those glitzy, frothy, fancy wedding-centered dramas that are designed for a smooth, inoffensive watch party with friends. Sometimes, that’s all you need as a mood lightener. While the film is startlingly rote and unimaginative, it isn’t entirely frustrating. It’s all lavish and cheesy and refrains from trying too hard to be showboating and attention-grabbing. If you keep expectations low, you won’t mind the film too much. There are no significant, heart-stopping moments here, only a cruising-like vibe that foregrounds trusting impulses and believing in second chances. It’s never too late for happiness to arrive, even if it comes through in the most unexpected ways.
Mother of the Bride (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Emma (Miranda Cosgrove) is a lifestyle influencer. She is initially apprehensive about informing her mother, Lana (Brooke Shields), who is a world-renowned geneticist, of her engagement to RJ (Sean Teale). She doubts her mother will welcome her decision, knowing how much Lana would rather prefer her to focus on her studies and potential career. However, Lana isn’t vehemently opposed, reassuring her that it is her happiness that matters the most to her. But she is surprised at Emma’s haste in getting married. Emma tells her that she has landed a deal with a high-end resort company, Discovery, that’s offering to sponsor her entire wedding. Lana isn’t instantly cheery about the proposal but agrees anyway.
It is a destination wedding in Phuket. The biggest surprise occurs when Lana discovers the father of RJ is her former lover from college, Will (Benjamin Bratt). It wasn’t just a fling but a passionate connection, the details of which gradually emerge. Will and Lana try to act like they have put their past behind them as ex-flames, but their throbbing emotion for each other constantly catches up with them. It isn’t something, they realize, they can bury.
Especially Lana is more certain of not wanting her relationship with the man who had broken her heart to resume. She tells her daughter how Will had ghosted her. But she also admits she’d changed numbers and moved away without informing him. She asks Emma if she is very sure RJ has no such habits of indecision and unreliability as his father. Emma is conflicted for a while however RJ eases her doubts.
Lana attempts to disengage herself from Will by going out with a young doctor. Soon, she can no longer repress the attraction she still feels for Will. A skinny-dipping excursion among Lana, Will and their college friends draws trouble, resulting in a stormy argument between Lana and Emma. Will takes her to a secluded spot to help her distract herself from the emotional turbulence. It is then that Will explains why he had to cut himself off in the past. Seeing how Lana was confident of her future, he realized he had to prepare himself for a journey of self-discovery. By the time he circled back to Lana, she was already married. Will could never love RJ’s mother, leading to a divorce. The wellspring of the emotional confession melts Lana as she considers rebuilding their romance.
Mother of the Bride (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Do Lana and Will get back together?
Few nights later, Lana overhears a conversation Will has on the phone. She presumes it is his lover, and she is deeply upset she has been betrayed. At the wedding, Lana seems visibly distressed, although she refuses to divulge what has been bothering her. Finally, Will confronts her about it and she reveals she’d overheard his call. She demands why he broke her heart once again. Will discloses he’d been talking to his assistant, Katrina. He springs the engagement ring, requesting her to marry him. To bring the ring to him is what he’d been nudging Katrina. Swept with emotion, Lana agrees, and the two embark on a second innings of their romance.
 Mother of the Bride (2024) Movie Review:
There’s a certain crop of films that are so cheerfully content with being crisply banal that it becomes difficult to see merit in them. That it’s easy to coast along on the energy of such films is surely a happy situation, which cannot be grudged. They are simple, low-effort, and require barely anything from the viewer in terms of investing intelligence.
You just breeze through the events of the film with a blasé confidence that any crisis that props up will be inevitably resolved. Therefore, any real emotional attachment to the characters is almost entirely negated. It is a glossy world whose perfectly shiny surfaces distract us from the screenplay, which otherwise flattens all dramatic conflicts and inner hesitation to an undemanding series of situations. The briskness is dialed up, the pleasantness furiously heightened. Everything’s sparkling iridescent, and no inconvenience is really major.
Thankfully, Brooke Shields and Benjamin Bratt have a palpable chemistry that keeps us afloat. The two have a rugged charm and an instantly believable spark. They convince us that they are essaying people who’ve had a shared romantic history. Even if Robin Bernheim’s screenplay recycles all the oldest cliches in the book by integrating scenes that force the two to acknowledge the love that still rages between the two, the actors tide over the mundanity of the material with the frissons they ratchet up. They ground the film in a romantic heat.
There’s a remarkable, surprisingly easy addition of a non-imposing hunk merely existing as eye candy. The clipped length of the film mercifully skirts the chance of the film drowning in excessive superficiality. There is such generic silliness in the film it makes you question if they actually cared to invest effort in the screenplay instead of relying on a spruced-up location. Everything folds together comfortably without being creaky. There are only two ways in which the film can present itself to the viewer. Either you will find this conventional, dull and asinine or a mindless but not unbearable sail through familiar territory.
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