Mother's Day is as charming as a delivery of silk flowers

Seen in the best possible light, Mother’s Day pays tribute to a wide variety of moms. Given the state of our Union, director Garry Marshall and the film’s writers have a lot of ground to cover in two hours. The time constraint—the week leading up to Mother’s Day—might explain the film’s hasty treatment of thorny relationships but not its ham-handed stereotyping and racially insensitive casting gaffes.

“Happiest divorced couple” Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) and Henry (Timothy Olyphant) share custody of their two tween boys. After Henry reveals he recently married a model half his age, Sandy battles to stay relevant in her sons’ lives. Aniston fails to dial up sympathy or laughs in her exasperated-mother role, but blame might lie with her character’s artificial trajectory: Unbelievably, Sandy increasingly feels it’s noble to share mothering duties with her ex’s skimpily clad wife.

Bradley (Jason Sudeikis), a father of two girls, after 12 months still mourns the loss of his Marine lieutenant wife (Jennifer Garner). Hollywood’s typical spineless dad, Bradley tiptoes around his daughters.

Sisters Jesse (Kate Hudson) and Gabi (Sarah Chalke) live in the same house and are hiding their marriages from their backward parents, Earl (Robert Pine) and Flo (Margo Martindale), who make a surprise visit in their camper. Jesse’s marriage to a doctor from India and Gabi’s to a woman shock the trailer park retirees.

Mother’s Day lumps homosexual and racial civil rights together under one roof and sets up the bigots (identifiable by Earl’s “Hardcore American” T-shirt and fisherman’s hat with the outline of the state of Texas) to make fools of themselves. Earl’s over-the-top honky-tonk drawl turns his scenes into Dukes of Hazzard episodes, but he does land a good one-liner when he rejects the offer of an expensive European ale.

“I import my beer from the RV,” Earl boasts.

But wait, there’s more. The film’s loosely connected melodramas pop in and out like a slide projector carousel set on random-shuffle.

Kristin (Britt Robertson) and Zack (Jack Whitehall) live together with their newborn, but Kristin refuses Zack’s marriage proposals. Given up for adoption as an infant, Kristin faces new abandonment issues when she learns Home Shopping Network star Miranda Collins (Julia Roberts) is her mother.

Wigged in a red-tinted bob, wrapped in a leopard-print shirt, and wobbling on high heels, Roberts nevertheless makes Miranda the film’s most genuine character. She gazes puckishly into the HSN television studio camera, hawking mood crystals, but she also stares wistfully out the window of a slow-moving train, regretting she never made time for a family. Miranda’s reunion with Kristin doesn’t get the screen time it deserves.

On a positive note, Mother’s Day (rated PG-13 for language and some suggestive material) unmistakably celebrates pregnancy and children. Ernie and Flo’s growing affection for their grandson, Tanner, helps conquer their prejudice against his father. Surprisingly, a film seemingly intent on portraying inclusiveness relegates African-American characters to the background. The Mother’s Day cast is almost entirely vanilla, unless you count the two grocery store clerks and three young men who roll up the inflatable slide after a party. No black fathers, and in a minor role only one mother—Bradley’s gym acquaintance, Kimberly (Loni Love), whose more realistic figure contrasts sharply with the film’s model-thin white moms.