Mom and Me

The latest from director Ken Wardrop makes His and Hers feel like a Louis Theroux documentary. Mom and Me explores similar themes to that lovely 2009 outing but is softer still.

Like His and Hers, Wardrop opens with a quote that encapsulates everything the documentary is trying to say, this time from Oscar Wilde: "All women become their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his." Wardrop moves kit and caboodle to Oklahoma City, the "manliest city in the US," but finds the same affable people he interviewed in the midlands. The framing device is simple, if fabricated for dramatic effect: Joe Cristiano is a DJ who decides his talk show this particular day will revolve around how tough guys feel about their mothers, leading men in Oklahoma to call in to tell their story. Cue all walks of life - Drug addicts in prison, teenage athletes suffering from spina bifida, middle-aged singletons, sixty-three-year-old Native Americans, religious figureheads of small churches – who all have different stories to regale about their mammies.

It’s cute – all mothers are largely great with some verging on the wacky (one organising a choreographer for her funeral) – but Wardrop casts the net wider with some who had more difficult relationships. One son remembers the violent episodes (his mother now implores him to give his children the love she didn't give him) while another feels that he never felt loved, devastating his mother with the news. These are the moments that suggest a deeper documentary was in arm's length but Wardrop retreats from such things to keep Mom & Me breezy.

Wardrop subtlety links some stories together: when Joe talks about a mother and son playing monopoly, this segues into another mom-son’s love of chess, and when he mentions that he thought he was mollycoddled, not becoming an adult until his thirties, that slips into a story about a son and a mother enjoying childish pranks and antics. The style makes for a seamless documentary and its easy going nature is a winning factor.

You don’t have to wait too long for the end credits (it's three minutes shorter than the short His and Hers) but there's a real kicker right at the close. A documentary that will inspire one to call their mum and if that's the very least one will get out of Mom & Me then it’s job done.