Motherhood can be a, well, you know the word.
- Sleepless nights
- Endless feedings
- Crying jags that go on and on and on
“Nightbitch” honors that thankless truth with a twist. What if an overwhelmed, first-time mother felt an animalistic urge that helped her cope with those realities?
We’re talking claws, hair and a taste for flesh.
It’s a sharp satirical gimmick, and casting Amy Adams as said momma is a wise choice. What writer/director Marielle Heller does with the premise is darn near criminal.
Oh, and it’s woke to the core in the worst of ways.
Adams stars as the unnamed Mother struggling to care for her young son. The lad appears to be two and thus needs plenty of maternal love.
Mother is ready to supply it, but everything in her life takes a backseat to parenthood. She even puts her artistic impulses on hold to care for the toddler.
Stop the presses!
The frustrations are still ripe material for storytellers. It doesn’t mean you hate motherhood or parenting to share it.
It doesn’t help that Mother’s spouse (Scoot McNairy) is clueless about his wife’s woes. He travels for work. A lot. When he’s home he’s either playing video games or complaining about the chores Mother does without blinking.
“Honey, did you know we’re out of milk?” he laments, helpless to run to the corner grocery to fix the problem. This guy’s straight from Feminist Central Casting, no?
Nightbitch Interview: Marielle Heller on Making Amy Adams Moviehttps://t.co/xJdWnWEMnj
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Mother begins experiencing urges she can’t explain. She sprouts hair in parts of her body where it never grew before. Her instincts sharpen and her hunger for meat explodes.
She grows parallel nipples on her abdomen and neither she nor her husband think anything of it. Or is it all in her mind?
None of that stops “Nightbitch” from uncorking lecture after lecture about the horrors of motherhood and The PatriarchyTM. The film stops cold at these moments, even when the narrative already made the points in play.
The tone-deaf script turns snooty urban dwellers into the kind of people Mother longs to impress. Fellow moms, meanwhile, lunge for snippets from their “old” lives. Read “pre-children.”
Regrets … they have a boatload. Gross.
The non-stop messaging is a drag, but what’s worse is how the story short-changes its own gimmick. What does Mother’s wolfly transformation mean? Could it complicate her waking life? What does it tell her, and us, about the rigors of motherhood?
The film eventually abandons the gimmick as if having second thoughts about it.
Huh?
It’s rare for a movie to wear its progressive agenda on its sleeve as brazenly as “Nightbitch.”
Along the way, McNairy’s character endures chronic emasculation. Of course. Did Kathleen Kennedy drop by the set with a yellow pad brimming with suggestions?
Problems that could be solved with a fair and open conversation turn into massive fights. Worst of all, the film drags without anything resembling a narrative drive.
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Adams, who appears to have gained weight for the role, does what she can with the material. She’s fierce, then frightened. Her character is so eager to re-ignite her art career that she puts everything else aside.
Yasss, queen.
Snark aside, “Nightbitch” delivers a relatable look at motherhood that any parent can embrace. Too bad it drowns that sentiment in anti-family bile, bland beats and characters who can’t stop wagging their fingers at us.
Beastly.
HiT or Miss: “Nightbitch” squanders a meaty premise with lectures and transparent narrative tricks.
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