Take an average movie with a nice return to film by Jane Fonda, add another bland performance by Jennifer Lopez and you have Monster-In-Law. I watched it on a plane ride from Tokyo to Dallas and it was the perfect plane movie - a nice distraction but if you miss something, who cares? The best moments came when Fonda and Wanda Sykes were onscreen together. My grade:C.

Charming yet totally predictable. Not the best romantic comedy, but far from the worst. It falls right in the middle, with some great laugh-out-loud moments and some jokes that fall flat. Lopez and Fonda both deliver solid performances though Fonda is a standout. Wanda Sykes also delivers a great performance though she isn't given enough to work with for her character. B

I would have enjoyed this if it wasn't so obvious and predictable. And surprisingly unfunny in spots where they expected it to be funny (oh look, Charlie threw the bouquet and Viola caught it! how hilarious! sequel, anyone?). Let's start with what DOES work.

Easily, Wanda Sykes IS the movie. She may be a supporting character, but she is hilarious. I forgot how funny she can be, and excuse her for the short-lived Wanda at Large on FOX. As Sykes plays off everything Jane Fonda does, it just adds a chemistry that I wish was focused upon a lot more (like Loyal said). Unfortunately, it's basically just a supporting plotline. Now, if the supporting plotline was Charlie (J-Lo) getting married to Viola's son-in-law, that would have worked better. But, that would take some creativity, and the writer(s) have a small supply of that spread around. I also thought Elaine Stritch added a bit of humor to a horrible (and yes, predictable) plot twist at the end: Viola's mother-in-law is just as bad to her as she is to Charlie! How delightfully hilarious. Not.

What doesn't work? Everything else. From the clichéd choice for Charlie's friends (gay guy, bland girl) to the sappy ending that thankfully might spare us of a sequel in six years, this film is just a predictable movie and nothing more. It's not a mess at all, it just adds nothing to the genre, and, like I said, is mostly unfunny as well. Jennifer Lopez acts like a little kid for half the movie, and a schemer for the second half, and accomplished neither. Michael Vartan is... bleh. Who cares? A block of wood with a face could have done the same job. Will Arnett was so... un-Will Arnett. I'm used to Gob on "Arrested Development", so I expected at least a little humor in the role, but much like Vartan, he could have been replaced easily.

What's left is a lost opportunity for bigger laughs (Sykes and Fonda; Stritch) with plenty of opportunity for jokes that fall flat all over the place. It's harmless and it's far from a mess, but without much to offer, the film will be forgotten easily. In fact, it's probably already forgotten long ago.

Grade: C

C


What a sappy, cliché-ridden, uninspired and mostly unfunny piece of cinema! Jennifer Lopez is at her usual. She isn't hjorrible, neither is she good, though. Terrible mediocrity. Jane Fonda's return to the big screen left me unimpressed as well. She can't hold a candle to Roberrt de Niro in Meet the Parents (who had a similar role). What's all the praises sung to Wanda Sykes? I didn't find her particulary funny either. She had some generic one-liners of which maybe one or two worked. Elaine Stritch's 5-minutes appearance at the end was the highlight of the movie and the only part that actually made me laugh/smile. The movie overall is, as I mentioned above, terribly predictable and sappy. At least it isn't too boring and the running time is short enough not to bother me too much. Too bad since much more could have been made out of the given premise.

F

Utterly catastrophic. And I usually love Jane Fonda. In a decent, humane society, this would be a career killer for all.

Crap. Wonda Sykes was tame.

D.

Well, im one of the FEW people in this board or in this world that actually enjoys Jennifer Lopez on the big screen, even if the movie was horrible, i like her.....

anyway...i thought the movie was pretty funny, i really enjoyde it A LOT
its definetely not the best, theres nothing really original and its very predictible but nevertheless it was fun to watch.

Im very disappointed by Wanda Sykes her jokes were just....

B

I want to know how the actors, writers, producers, etc. could have honestly sat back at the end of the day and thought to themselves... "Yeah, guys. Job well done."

It's not funny, it's not 'cute,' the acting is TERRIBLE (OH MY GOODNESS), and the jokes fall completely flat.

I've never really been one to bag on Jennifer Lopez, but holy crap. And Michael Vartan, too. Both are awful.

Worst film I've seen in a long time.

D-

Eeek! Aside from few funny moments, the rest is an unfunny mess! While Jane Fonda does what she can with the material, and Wanda Sykes has great comic timing, Jennifer Lopez is just horrible! The movie is cliched and badly written. C-

This film is too bloody hilarious to give anything less than a B-. Sometimes it's too chick-flicky for me, and the film overall by no means excels in anything in particular, and there were a lot of things I can and would pick at that I didn't like, but I'm not going to because it's just the general "average film reekiness" that I think everyone generally understands. But the chemistry between Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda is absolutely BRILLIANT. I laughed damn hard at some of the attempts to sabotage the other, and the facial expressions both master. Jennifer Lopez gets too much slack, leading me to say she is generally underrated. Lopez, for example, was the only great thing about the movie "Enough". She made that movie watchable.

B-

Pretty much agree.

I think that this is one of these movies that a ton of people hate but I kind of view as a guiltry pleasure.

C-

One of the worst chickflicks ive seen in a long time. I seriously laughed maybe once in the whole film.

Jane Fonda was completely over the top, the writing botched the strong concept and Jennfier Lopez was reasonably likable but became grating. Michael Vartan is as wooden as they come and everytime wanda sykes was on screen she did practically exactly the same thing.

The characters were incredibly generic and underexplained, I mean we really had no reasoning behind any of the actions in the movie at all.

I didn't see any chemistry between Fonda and Lopez to be honest. The whole film was just a bit of a boring mess. The ending was horrific.

Out of the 56 releases I viewed last year this waste of space is easily the worst of them all, fallowed by bewitched, that turd