I love these films with interrelated groups, and especially when the theme is motherhood, I was able to delight, cheer and thrill, in a mixture of romance, comedy and drama, all very adorable and sensitive, a little exaggerated and very engaging, big names, great script, total chemistry...

Mother's Day had a very promising story which was ruined by utterly poor execution and a complete waste of acting talent which was loaded due to the casting of the movie.

Story (7/10): Well, nothing was so much wrong with the story. Four different lives, four different challenges and at some point of time, they cross the paths - and all of it is centered around the hullabaloo of Mother's Day. They all have their own theories and ideas for the big day but they end up doing almost nothing that they originally thought of - and that's where teeny tiny bit of the fun lies in the movie. A well conceptualized story though.

Acting (5/10): Acting is where this entire movie falls apart in spite of big names like Julia Roberts and Jennifer Anniston. Anniston still seems to be in that "Friends" zone with her dialog delivery. The expressions are off and doesn't seem to be in the character really, except for last few minutes in the climax. Julia Roberts holds pretty much a flat face throughout the movie. Jason Sudeiki was probably the only saving grace. The rest of the cast makes a decent attempt but aren't able to lift up the movie.

Direction (4/10): The direction of the movie is awful. Close to half of the movie misses the flow and the scenes look like stitched together as the director struggles to smoothly transition from one story to another. The screenplay is pathetic and isn't able to hold the audience more than few seconds. It is only at the end that things come together when the four characters converge. However, the overall execution of the movie "executes" the story. It just looks like the director suddenly realized that Mother's Day is arriving and he has to release a movie before that.

Overall (5/10): Poorly executed. Should give it a pass.

It's Atlanta with Mother's Day coming up. Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) and Henry (Timothy Olyphant) are divorced with kids. He surprises her with news of his new marriage to the younger Tina. Neighboring sisters Jesse (Kate Hudson) and Gabi (Sarah Chalke) are avoiding their traditional Texan parents (Margo Martindale, Robert Pine) for different reasons. Jesse is married to brownish Russell (Aasif Mandvi) with a son. Gabi is gay with partner Max (Cameron Esposito) and her boy. Zack Zimm (Jack Whitehall) is desperate to marry his baby mama Kristin (Britt Robertson) but she has abandonment issues having never met her biological mother. Bradley Barton (Jason Sudeikis) misses his wife Dana (Jennifer Garner),a year after her death, and has to raise two girls by himself. Miranda Collins (Julia Roberts) is a self-help guru who becomes connected to some of these characters.

Garry Marshall has delivered another one of his money-making holiday movie. These are not good movies and this one is even worst than the others. The relationships are sometimes simplistic and it's more like several sitcoms smashed into one movie. Each connection needs more time to develop and inhabit the situations. If this movie gets split into four, one or two hold the possibility of developing into a good story if I'm being generous. These A-list stars don't help either.