The Guilt Trip (2012)

Genre: Comedy

Directed by: Anne Fletcher

Starring: Barbra Streisand, Seth Rogan

Running time: 95 minutes

I was looking for something light to watch with my wife on Saturday and The Guilt Trip was chosen. This 2012 comedy tells the story of Andy Brewster, an inventor trying to sell a new cleaning product. As he embarks on a sales trip, he decides to invite his overbearing widowed mother, with the secret mission of reuniting her with an old flame along the way.

Seth Rogan and Barbra Streisand show some very good chemistry on screen. The diva’s character is over-the-top and a little aggravating at the beginning, but she grows on you like she does on her son. It is interesting to see Rogan in another role than that of stoner loser. Here, he plays a very smart but uptight man who needs to learn how to relate to others if he wants to be successful in his job.

At the beginning of the movie, the humor fell kind of flat for me, but, as we went along, the cuteness and the humanity of the whole thing got to me. There has been many father and son and mother and daughter movies, but the mother and son relationship is an interesting perspective also. There were some funny parts, though no real laugh-out-loud moments. Overall, The Guilt Trip is a good light and sweet little movie that will make you want to call or hug your mother when it’s over for not being as overbearing as Barbra’s character…unless she is.

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