My Review of "Stage Mother"

Stage Mother is a feel good movie that game out in 2020. It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime for free as I write this. I wasn't too sure what to make of this movie but in the end I was delighted by a heartwarming story with an upbeat perspective. It's got a story that we kind of need nowadays.

This movie starts off with a drag queen bar in San Francisco. It seems dingy and run down. Not a lot of people are going to it and you can tell everyone is down and out. These drag queens make some pretty funny pun jokes that have something to do with sex and genitals but in a way they're sort of like dad jokes in a corny way.

Anyways there's this one drag queen by the name of Rickey that is performing and it looks like she's done quite a bit of drugs. She basically overdoses onstage and it's a pretty horrific situation. Ultimately she passes away from the complications from the drugs.

Soon we jump to Rickey's mother Maybelline. She's a southern mother but lives with conservative values. Obviously she's distraught when she finds out that her son had died from an overdose. The problem is that when the father finds out he doesn't want anything to do with it. She decides to do what's right and goes to San Francisco to see her beloved son one last time at his funeral.

When she gets to the funeral she realizes why she and her son have been estranged for all these years. The whole funeral is littered with drag queens and there's a huge song and dance dedicated for him. I guess this is a little too much for her so she decides to leave the funeral.

Meanwhile, Rickey's boyfriend, Nathan, noticed that Maybelline was at the funeral and has huge distain for Maybelline. Since Maybelline never came to see Rickey, Nathan and him never got married. It was Rickey's dream to have his mother approve of his wedding. Now that they never got married and never wrote a will, all of Rickey's estate goes to his next of kin which would be his mother. Nathan worked hard as Rickey's partner to keep the drag bar Rickey owned running. All that hard work is now Maybelline's.

The thing is Maybelline doesn't really want it. She wants to forage better relationships with the people in Rickey's life. That includes Nathan who has a huge hate for her.

What we have now is a case of Maybelline trying to make amends for the wrongs that she's done over the years. She knows she can't take back the years that she was estranged from her son but she can try to build the drag bar back to profit and build her relationship with Nathan's boyfriend.

It's a pretty predictable movie and you know what's exactly going to happen but the actors do a good job in portraying their characters to help us feel for them. There's a few really cheesy parts in this movie that you know are formulaic but I understood why they needed them in there.

I recognize that this is a pretty small budget movie so I have to commend them for what they did with what they had. All of it was story based and character driven so it really emphasized the actors to do a good job in building their characters.

Ultimately this is a story about redemption. They are telling us to do what is right. Sometimes our own points of views have to be put away so that we can spend time with our loved ones because this time is precious and finite. You never know what can happen and we shouldn't squabble about things that don't matter in the long run.

Also they talk about how a parent's approval or guidance changes the course of a child's life. We're all influenced by our parents so it's only natural for us to want their approval as well. When a parent doesn't provide approval of their child they can go into some pretty dark places. Still it's tough for the parent to see their child go through certain things that they know will cause them so much trouble in the future. It's tough to really see what each side should do. The biggest thing they wanted us to see is that sometimes there should be a compromise because our lives are better spent together.

Overall, I like the messages that this movie is trying to tell us and they tell us these messages in an entertaining way. Some of the side stories are kind of lost by the wayside but overall the main story is there. I thought it was a nice feel good story that frankly we all need nowadays however I know a lot of people can't truly appreciate it. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. It is entertaining but it also has some glaring holes in the movie especially the flow of the movie.