Public success, critical failure and Jennifer Lopez as a star: what about Netflix’s ‘The Mother’?

Jennifer Lopez has given Netflix a good joy, at least in terms of numbers. ‘The mother’, the action film that he has starred in and produced for the platform is already a success: the day it was released it was number one in 83 countries and in its first week abroad it has achieved 83.7 million hours viewed, which is a better debut than that of ‘Criminales a la vista’ (64.4 million) and even than that of ‘Glass Onion’ (which achieved 82.1 million in its first week). However, a good part of the critics has preferred to give it a good slap with an open hand. But is it really that terrible or is it that giving the singer a hard time every time she makes a movie has become a hobby for many people? Is it worth watching the film, in which we also find Joseph Fiennes and Gael García Bernal, or do we save it?

What is this about ‘The mother’?

The mother is not only the title of the film but also the way in which we will meet Jennifer Lopez’s character, since her name is never mentioned. And, obviously, she is a mother and that has weight in the story. She is an ex-serviceman who for a time was professionally and romantically entangled with arms dealers, but she tried to distance herself from them by becoming pregnant. Her partners and her lovers did not allow her to get away from her and chased her until the sequence with which she begins the story, when she is interrogated by the FBI and they are attacked. The result is that, after an explosion and childbirth, The Mother must give her daughter up for adoption to protect her, although the FBI promises to contact her if things get rough. And, when the time comes, of course they get dodgy. And there opens the plot of Jennifer Lopez saving her daughter and fighting with the bad guys.

The film is based on a story by Misha Green (who the series fans will find as the creator of ‘Lovecraft Territory’), who signs the script along with Peter Craig (‘The Batman’, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’) and Andrea Berloff ( ‘Straight Outta Compton’), while the directing task falls to Niki Caro, author of the acclaimed ‘Whale Rider’ and also of the live-action version of ‘Mulan’. It seeks to be a classic action movie, and sometimes pulls too much from some clichés of the genreto the greater glory of a Jennifer Lopez in absolute star quality, for better and for worse.

And how is ‘The mother’?

Go ahead, it is not a film that is going to change anyone’s life, nor is it intended to. ‘The mother’ is solid and solvent, it is well directed and its script, although stereotyped at times (the persecution through Cuba could be placed in any other film of the style and nobody would notice the difference), is entertaining enough so that we are not we get bored in the two hours it lasts. In addition, it maintains the tone well: the characters have a dramatic weight and a seriousness that balances some elements introduced simply for enjoyment and enjoyment of the action, thus giving it some roots so that everything does not remain in a hilarious and unintentionally parodic operetta.

It is still a story that, moving some chips and changing others, we have already seen a thousand times. It could be a Liam Neeson movie saving a daughter or the umpteenth Bourne transient. The great differential is that here it is Jennifer Lopez who starts to give hosts like loaves and if something needs a film of this type, it is a great star (tell Tom Cruise). It is true that Lopez’s acting career has been, to say the least, irregular, but I am one of those who argue that it would not have been unreasonable for her to nominate her for an Oscar for ‘Wall Street Hustlers’. ‘The mother’ isn’t the best performance of her (she sometimes goes too far with her steely stares, although keeping this from making a fool of yourself is also a talent), but it works well.

“A lot of ‘The Mother’ looks like a movie star doing what she thinks is a tough, serious, jaded heroine, rather than playing one. Lopez is quite a skilled actress, so you wish she had used some more expressive ones for this revenge movie,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. And you are right, that may or may not be a problem with the tape, depending on how you look at it, which above the interpretation you are always aware that you are seeing Jennifer Lopez, with her hair inappropriate for being hidden in Alaska. For me, that is not a defect, seeing Jennifer Lopez giving milk is, in fact, my biggest incentive to press play. If she were someone else or, worse, if she were a lord, maybe she wouldn’t have done it.