After two abominable Fockers movies, Ms. Streisand has gone on record saying she will never play any more rolling-voweled Jewish mothers, but that is exactly what she does here. Saving bottles to reuse several times over to save money, collecting ceramic frogs, noisily crunching M&Ms—she’s a pickled Fanny Brice. Mr. Rogen, who looks like Limburger cheese, has carved an inexplicable career out of playing dorks who make the word “retarded” politically acceptable again; but Andy is, to his mother, the perfect son who can do no wrong. Instead of wondering why he repels women like a goiter, she blames his bachelor status on the pathetic ignorance of liberated women today. In truth, he’s pudgy and plain as a wet mop, a college grad who can’t get a job. Now he’s invented a cleaning fluid nobody wants, and is on the verge of a cross-country mission to sell the product. In the inane small talk that overwhelms this thin little movie like a hailstorm, Joyce reveals she was once madly, passionately in love with another young man named Andy, who inspired her son’s name. Intrigued, he traces his namesake to a San Francisco advertising agency, and for reasons too specious to go into, this unlikely mother-son team drives away in a rented Dodge SUV. Without a defining narrative, the rest of the movie, lazily written by Dan Fogelman and tediously directed by Anne Fletcher as though intimidated into catatonia by the bigger-than-life Streisand, meanders through a series of dull pit-stop adventures that substitute for action. Joyce brings along a book on tape about a hermaphrodite. She carries a hook around to hang her purse from various tables because the floors are dirty. While Andy pitches his invention to deaf ears, Joyce gets hit on in a bar by a tough dude who gives her son a black eye. In Lubbock, Texas, she enters a humongous steak-eating contest where she is forced to swallow four pounds of rare sirloin without throwing up, and attracts the attention of a handsome cowboy who asks her for a date on his next trip to New York. Onward to the Grand Canyon, a Las Vegas casino and ... but why go on? Wherever they land, there is nothing to write home about, and what happens is not worth repeating.

All you can really do is stare at every calculated movement of a great star drowning in material as bland and gummy as oatmeal. You can’t make caviar out of jujubes, but La Streisand
is living proof that you can die trying. Unfortunately she doesn’t sing, but the voice is like buttah. The wig looks good. You can’t take your eyes off the cherry talons she calls nails. She still holds attention. I don’t like to see the legendary star of Funny Girl and The Way We Were reduced to playing Molly Goldberg on a bad day, but sympathy goes just so far. Star vehicles, even for icons, are not what they used to be. She doesn’t need the money. So what’s the excuse? With The Guilt Trip, she can’t claim senior citizen victimization. She produced it.

rreed@observer.com

The Guilt Trip

Running Time 96 minutes

Written by Dan Fogelman

Directed by Anne Fletcher

Starring Barbra Streisand,
Seth Rogen and Kathy Najimy

Sometimes watching how Hollywood studios operate is more entertaining than the movies they produce. Case in point: Moneyball. For those of you haven’t been following the chaos surrounding the now-dead adaptation of Michael Lewis’s nonfiction baseball best seller: Steven Soderbergh and Brad Pitt were all set to make this film for Sony Pictures—with a budget of around $57 million—when, just days before shooting started, company co-chair Amy Pascal pulled the plug because of issues with Mr. Soderbegh’s revised script. Ms. Pascal says that the revisions made the film too much like a “dramatic reenactment” and not like the baseball comedy with Brad Pitt that they agreed to, a statement we’re pretty sure is code for, “We wanted to make something more crappy!” We’re tempted to get out the pitchforks and torches for Ms. Pascal, but, considering Warner Brothers, Paramount and Fox all passed on Moneyball as well—Sony was kind enough to let Messrs. Pitt and Soderbergh shop the script around to see if another studio wanted in—it appears that she is far from alone in her poor decision making. If Hollywood doesn’t think it can make money on a moderately budgeted film with international superstar Brad Pitt and directed by an Oscar winner, what can they make money on? Take a look at some of the ridiculous projects being tossed around this week!

Mother’s Curse: Because you didn’t ask for it, here comes Seth Rogen and Barbara Streisand playing a son and mother on a road trip. True story! While, admittedly, this proposed film isn’t actually that close to happening—to quote Mr. Rogen, it’s “one of the many projects I may or may not do in the next fifteen years”—just the simple idea that it could happen strikes us as both hilarious and scary.

Asteroids: We were about to sit here and scoff at the idea of Universal going forward with a big-screen adaptation of the ’80s arcade game that is sure to be light on story and heavy on special effects. Then we remembered that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen not only exists, but it has already grossed a katrillion billion dollars.

Cloudburst: What is it with Hollywood and road trip comedies? In Cloudburst (terrible title, p.s.), Oscar winners Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker star as a couple who break out of their nursing home and travel to Canada to get married. Think Thelma and Louise but with old ladies making out. This gets past “Go,” but Moneyball doesn’t? Nice industry.

Barbara Streisand might be bailing out of participating in the celebration of Israel's 60th birthday because in addition to Nicolas Sarkozy, Carla Bruni, Steven Spielberg, Rupert Murdoch and Natalie Portman, George W. Bush will also be attending. [P6]

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes spent $100,000 on Suri's second birthday, which she's sure to remember for the rest of her life. You know how good those 2-year-olds' memories are! [NY Daily News]

Lower East Side's The Box is being accused of money laundering, importing marijuana, and hiring rapists. Or someone might just be really pissed that they couldn't get into the club. [NY Daily News]

Jay-Z—the guy who once rapped, "Me give my heart to a woman? Not for nothin, never happen, I'll be forever mackin"—is officially married to Beyoncé. [US Weekly]

Despite testing ways to increase its television audiences and being the most important show ever, Gossip Girl only scored about half the number of viewers of MTV's The Hills when it premiered on Monday. [US Weekly]

Amy Poehler drew her own headshots and signed them for Harlem residents during the shooting of Baby Mama. [NY Daily News]