Stage Mother

CinemaSerf 3/27/2022 12:53:28PM 8.4

Jacki Weaver is "Maybeline", a pretty conservative Texan woman who discovers that her estranged, gay, son has died of an overdose in San Francisco. Despite the protestations of her husband "Jeb" she heads off to the funeral and begins to discover just how ("Ricky"), long-term boyfriend "Nathan" (Adrian Grenier) and best friend "Sienna" (Lucy Liu) have been living their lives - and of how he and "Nathan" had been running their own drag club. Initially she faces scepticism and hostility from all but "Sienna" - who sees an opportunity for a free babysitter - particularly as it transpires that her son had no will and so everything he had now belongs to her. Her husband just wants to sell it all, but she decides to try and make a go of it; and to make friends with the folks her son loved. It's a kindly, feel-good film with a gentle, if slightly sweet, storyline peppered with some good old drag innuendo and cattiness. The songs are a bit on the cheesy side, but that doesn't really matter. Essentially, this is a film about regret and having the balls to do something about it - part of her determination to make a success of the club and of the acts is driven by guilt, but much of it is also driven by her own pent-up frustrations having been stuck in a banal marriage that had managed to suffocate much of the personality in her that her late son had managed to manifest in his own life. It's not a great film, at times the production borders on the amateur, but Liu and Weaver deliver engaging characters quite well and I rather enjoyed it.