Susan Granger’s review of “Monster-in-Law” (New Line Cinema)
People who won’t forgive Jane Fonda for posing for photos perched on an enemy anti-aircraft gun during the Vietnam conflict may never forget, but it’s certainly not her fault that this tepid underdog bride concept falls flat. For a romantic comedy, it’s neither romantic nor funny. As the one-joke story begins, free-spirited Charlotte “Charlie” Cantinili (Jennifer Lopez) has finally found the perfect man, Dr. Kevin Fields (Michael Vartan). That is, until she meets his mother, Viola Fields (Fonda), a recently fired TV anchorwoman who fears she may now lose her son as she lost her job. Enlisting the help of her personal assistant Ruby (Wanda Sykes), Viola is determined to scare off ‘unworthy’ Charlie but, as the claws come out, she finds that she’s met her match in this feisty would-be daughter-in-law who is determined to beat her at her own game. While Anya Kochoff’s script is nowhere near as funny as “Meet the Parents,” director Robert Luketic (“Legally Blonde”) also has the chore of eliciting humor from Jennifer Lopez, who doesn’t have the comic timing of a trained actress like Reese Witherspoon. As if trying to compensate, Jane Fonda goes over-the-top with slapstick as the domineering matriarch. When two-time Oscar-winner Fonda signed on to this as her comeback after a 15-year absence from the screen (she was last seen with Robert DeNiro in “Stanley and Iris”), perhaps she hoped Jennifer Lopez’s presence might introduce her to a younger, hip audience. Oops! On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Monster-in-Law” is a disappointing 3. It’s ironic that Jennifer Garner (once married to Michael Vartan) and Ben Affleck (once engaged to Jennifer Lopez) are now a hot off-screen couple, proving, perhaps, that real-life is stranger than a casting director ever imagined.
