Tailor-made for holiday release, this sweet comedy pairs Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand (whose respective fans are two generations apart) as mother and son on a contentious cross-country road trip. The son, a hapless entrepreneur, is driving west to pitch a new cleaning product to wholesalers; henpecked to death by his widowed mother, he conspires to reunite her with a former teenage love who's now living in San Francisco—so that she'll leave him alone—and invites her to come along for the drive. The gags are all predicated on the embarrassment of traveling with one's mom: car trouble forces them to pull over at a strip club, where one of the girls fixes their wheel, etc. Rogen and Streisand are reasonably funny together, though Rogen, always best when he's angry, is crowded into the role of a well-mannered straight man. Anne Fletcher directed.
By
J.R. Jones
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