– By Cate Marquis –
‘The Meddler” is more than comedy in warm portrait of meddling mother
“The Meddler” is writer/director Lorene Scafaria semi-biographical movie about her widowed mother, who moved across the country to build a new life around her grown daughter. The mother, played marvelously by Susan Sarandon, is indeed a meddler but despite the comic title, “The Meddler” is more than a simple comedy about a meddlesome mother but a warm dramedy that explores a mother-daughter relationship as the mother copes with her new life as a widow.
Left financially secure after the death of her beloved husband, Marnie Minervini (Sarandon) decides it is time for a change in her life. The change she picks is to be closer to her daughter – literally. Marnie moves from her longtime home in New Jersey to Los Angeles, where her unmarried daughter Lori (Rose Byrne) is a successful television producer. With a new iPhone, a condo in the Grove neighborhood and plenty of free time and money, bubbly mom Marnie devotes herself to her daughter – calling or texting her daughter several times a day, letting herself in to her house unannounced, befriending her friends, involving herself in her daughter’s love life and even offering to advise her daughter’s psychotherapist. Meanwhile, daughter Lori, nursing a broken heart after breaking up with her boyfriend, an actor named Jason (Jason Ritter), is quickly overwhelmed by her mother’s loving but too-constant presence.
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