Well, this one is just strange.
Mama’s Little Murderer opens with twenty-something Anthony (Isaac Kragten) being abducted and taken, with a bag over his head, to a random wooded location. Uh-oh, looks like Anthony is in trouble! Suddenly, we flash back to Anthony getting suspended from college because of his fearsome tempter. Then, a few weeks later, Anthony shows up at home where he is upset to discover that his mother, Constance (Sara Canning), is living with her boyfriend, Leo (Ian Kilburn). Anthony is jealous and goes to extremes to try to break up Constance and Leo.
Because of the title, I assumed that this film would be about a mom discovering that her son is a murderer. I also thought that the son would be much younger than he turned out to be. You don’t really refer to a twenty-year old as being “mama’s little anything.” Due to the title, I was expecting this to be a version of The Bad Seed. Instead, it just became a film about a selfish and rather annoying college student who couldn’t accept the fact that his mom was moving on with her life. Anthony went to extremes to try to break up Leo and his mom but, and please forgive the spoiler, he never murdered anyone.
While we’re watching Anthony act like a loser in the past, we’re also watching Constance and Leo trying to deal with him being kidnapped in the present. Now, I will say that there was some suspense as to whether or not Anthony was in on the kidnapping. Or at least, there was initially. But it soon became clear that, while Anthony was guilty of being a very bad son, he was not guilty of setting up his own kidnapping. Indeed, the kidnapping had very little do with his efforts to break up his mother and Leo.
As I watched this movie, I found myself thinking about how much I hated The King of Staten Island. That was the film that featured Pete Davidson as an annoying little jerk who got mad because his mother (Marisa Tomei) was dating a fireman (Bill Burr). My main issue with that film was that everyone seemed to be way too forgiving of Davidson’s character. The same thing happens here. Anthony does some terrible things. He doesn’t even tell his mom the truth about what happened at the college. But, when all of his lies and his schemes are revealed, he just apologizes and everyone’s like, “Oh, okay, that’s cool.” Whereas, in reality, they should have kicked him out of the house and had him committed somewhere.
(Needless to say, it’s never a good sign when a film makes you think about another film that you disliked.)
This was essentially two films in one. One film was about a mentally unstable son. The other film was a standard kidnapping film. Unfortunately, the two films didn’t really go together and neither one felt fully developed. It’s a shame because Sara Canning was likable as Constance and you really did hope that she would find happiness with Leo. It was hard not to feel that both Constance and Leo deserved better than having to deal with Anthony. They should have let the kidnappers keep him.
