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Moms and movies

It's Mother's Day this weekend, which means Hollywood will take what they consider a risk and release a comedy aimed at women.
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It's Mother's Day this weekend, which means Hollywood will take what they consider a risk and release a comedy aimed at women. Snatched stars Amy Schumer (Trainwreck) and Goldie Hawn (Overboard) as an odd couple/daughter-mother duo on vacation in South America, stumbling through raunchy jokes and getting kidnapped by bad guys who also seem awfully patient and understanding. Or something.

There were no pre-screeners for this one (red flag), but it looks suspiciously haphazard, and not in a good way. Hopefully I'm wrong. There are a few good jokes in the trailer (the "welcome/whale cum" gag), and director Jonathan Levine (The Night Before, The Wackness) and writer Katie Dippold (Ghostbusters) have displayed comic chops in the past. If Goldie Hawn is given the right lines and some space to shine this one could play well.

It's debatable how many actual mothers really want to accompany their adult children to an R-rated gross-out comedy about washing your vagina in a public washroom sink. This one might be like Bad Moms (dudes like it more than women do), but there's no way it can be worse than last year's offering, Mother's Day.

A better flick to celebrate the strength, love and power of all those incredible mothers out there would be Wonder Woman, the origin story of comic books' most kickass female warrior who comes to Earth and saves humanity.

Sadly, Warner Brothers is not releasing Wonder Woman until early June. Even worse, they are barely promoting it and only just dropped a second trailer this week after being dragged over the coals for ignoring what might be the most anticipated superhero movie of the year.

Wonder Woman cost over $100 million to make. It's the first movie adaptation of the most iconic comic book heroine of all time. It stars Gal Godot (best known for her work in the uber-popular Fast and Furious franchise) and Chris Pine (Hell or High Water, Star Trek), both very talented. It's directed by Patty Jenkins (Monster), and marks only the second time in history that a woman has helmed a movie budget over $100 million.

It also opens in three weeks and has anyone heard anything about it? Where are the endless posters, trailers and ads like we see for Justice League (Wonder Woman is a big part of that, too)? Where is the fast-food tie-in, Walmart toy line, and every other promotional/merchandise trick we saw for all sub-par junkie Spider-Man sequels?

It's weird, there's no way Wonder Woman will be worse than Green Lantern or Suicide Squad, and yet it's almost like Hollywood is afraid to take a chance on it. In an industry notoriously skewed to white males, this one seems like an easy way to help level the scales (especially after you've already sunk $100 mil into it), but Hollywood seems to think otherwise. If this movie succeeds, it opens doors for women to direct and drive more blockbusters, so we should all go see Wonder Woman when it opens June 2. Chances are it will be awesome, but if it doesn't put up big box-office numbers, you can bet Hollywood will blame the actress, the female director and even the character herself before anyone mentions the lack of marketing.

(And for the record, the best female-led comic movie is Tank Girl starring Lori Petty and Naomi Watts as super duper ass kickers in a Mad Max-style dystopian future desert world full of corporate greed, totalitarianism, and Ice-T as a mutant kangaroo ex-cop. The worst is probably Pamela Anderson's Barb Wire.)

Also opening at the Whistler Village 8, Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword stars Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy) and looks incredibly over-indulgent. Is there anything there beyond flashy action set pieces featuring the now-tired fast-to-slow-motion fight scenes? Probably not. (This one also wins for most redundant title of the year. Who doesn't know that the legend of King Arthur involves a sword?)

Finally, The Belko Experiment is a sort of claustrophobic torture porn mashed into your everyday office setting. Think Saw meets the Dilbert comics, and if that sounds awesome to you, chances are you'll dig this one where friendly coworkers are forced to slowly kill each other off or face even greater losses via exploding devices a corporation embedded in their skulls.

While it's not a terrible horror-satire, The Belko Experiment definitely leans more into splatter-torture territory, which means it's also a pretty unsuitable flick for taking your mom to on Mother's Day. Cook her dinner instead, spend some time together, or at least call her and thank her for putting up with your shit all these years. Moms rule!