At first glance it might sound like casting Seth Rogen as a pathetic manchild and Barbra Streisand as his overbearing mother and putting them in a road trip story together is the sort of movie idea that comes directly from the devil himself—or at least is a racist poking of fun at the jews—but in practice The Guilt Trip actually isn’t that terrible an experience. Or, at least, in a holiday week that’s full of epically long movies about fantasy creatures or ultra-violent revenge scenarios, it’s the kind of thing that you can feel comfortable taking your mother to.
I’m sure you can already guess every step this movie takes from start to finish. When Andy (Rogen) gets roped into taking his mother Joyce (Streisand) along with him on a business road trip, she at first gets on his nerves—she licks her hand and tries to fix his hair, she treats him like a child in professional situations where he desperately needs to look like an adult, and she inserts herself into aspects of his love life that he’d rather keep private. But, eventually, and after a crisis point where the two have had enough of each other, they realize that they have something to learn from one another after all, that they haven’t ever fully appreciated having the other in their life, and then they end the trip having a stronger relationship than they ever did going into it.
It’s a heartwarming story, one that your mother would describe as being “nice,” but it’s also the same beat-for-beat, clichéd story that every odd couple movie ever has told. Rogen and Streisand are both charming and capable in their roles though, and are able to elevate the material above the levels it should have reached. And the material itself isn’t so bad either. Director Anne Fletcher avoids hammering the sappy moments home with too heavy a hand and Dan Fogelman’s script not only has a handful of legitimate laughs, but it’s also able to subvert your expectations in subtle enough ways to not make it feel like a total waste of time. This isn’t quite Tommy Boy or Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, but it’s not Due Date or one of those terrible Harold and Kumar sequels either. Take your mother. She’ll love it.
