Stage Mother - August 2020 review

 Went to the cinema for the first time since lockdown, I've missed it so much the cinema is my spiritual home. Last film I saw was Le Mans '66 (Ford V Ferrari) (dir. James Mangold, 2019) on a silver screen re-release in mid March, the cinema was empty due to the fact older people were deciding themselves to isolate before the government brought it in. (The last new film I saw was Sonic the Hedgehog (dir. Jeff Fowler, 2020)  (in mid February). So has happened since then we can all agree, it was good to do something I love for the first time in over 4 months. 

Stage Mother promotional poster

I saw Stage Mother (dir. Thom Fitzgerald,2020) with my friends Maisie and Harry who like myself are fans of drag. The movie was about a woman, Maybelline, played by Jacki Weaver who inherits a gay bar from her son who died young, a bar which has regular drag performances on.She then helps the queens and other characters. 

It was an enjoyable enough film, could have done with a bit more of a journey for the characters, for them to have more of an aim, after Maybelline inherits the bar and decides to run it, within about the first ten minuites, it makes the audience question, well what now? A question the scriptwriter has a problem answering. I think it could have done with that happening later in the plot, with more of the relationship between mother, father and son shown on screen. Prephaps the bar could have been under threat by developers like the club in the 2009 movie, Burlesque (dir. Steve Antin, 2009). My friends enjoyed it more than I did (probably as they were not un-nessasarily analysing it like I was). It's the kind of film you don't have to focus to much on, a drag version of the the Military Wives (dir. Peter Cattaneo, 2020). 3 stars ✰✰✰

Jacki Weaver as Maybelline, mother to Ricky, and Ricky's fiancee Nathan (Adrian Grenier)