You may recall the Michael Keaton film, "Mr. Mom," where Keaton played a husband who's unemployed and manages the household while his wife is out working. Here, in the 2009 release "Mr. Troop Mom," George Lopez plays much the same type of guy, only this time he's a widower trying to deal with his thirteen-year-old daughter and her wilderness team. Different times, same idea.
Now, you might wonder if a story about a middle-aged man and about 800 very cute, early teenage girls out in the wild would produce a situation in somewhat questionable taste. But nope. Nothing here to fuel a Palin-Letterman controversy. "Mr. Troop Mom" is a Nickelodeon original TV movie, so squeaky clean the MPAA gave it a G rating, something usually afforded only to Disney and Pixar cartoons.
The trouble with most "family" movies, though, is that the term is a misnomer. It seems to me that good family movies should interest both children and adults, movies like the aforementioned Disney and Pixar animations, "Mary Poppins," "The Parent Trap," or "Spy Kids." Yet most filmmakers really aim their family pictures at young children, with parents obliged to put up with the films while their youngsters enjoy themselves. So it is with "Mr. Troop Mom," a film aimed squarely at families with kids, the specific appeal primarily to girls in the ten-to-fourteen year-old range. If you're an older teen or adult, I make no promises. I found it all rather bland and antiseptic but totally without offense.
Stand-up comic and TV sitcom star George Lopez co-produced and stars in "Mr. Troop Mom," another of the actor's attempts to bring wholesome entertainment and a non-stereotypical Hispanic image to movies and television. It might seem odd, then, that the movie should contain an almost nonstop string of other stereotypes and clichés, until you recognize that for children, the stereotypes and clichés probably aren't trite or overused at all.
Lopez plays a widowed lawyer, Eddie Serrano (no coincidence, I'm sure, that his real-life spouse is Ann Serrano), with a thirteen-year-old daughter, Naomi (Daniela Bobadilla), to care for. Naturally, as with almost all movies aimed at this age group, parents are either absent, invisible, or in this movie barely tolerated by their offspring. Naomi thinks her dad is completely clueless, something only encouraged by the impudent au pair, Catalina (Elizabeth Thai), an Asian woman whose Dragon Lady attitude and difficulty with the English language make her one of the movie's more unabashed stereotypes. Of course, we can see the movie's message coming in the first few minutes: Parents and their children must share common interests and mutual respect if they are ever to love one another fully. Eddie must show that he can "connect" with Naomi, or he'll lose her to...whatever.
Eddie is a flamboyant lawyer whose shenanigans no judge would actually allow in a courtroom, but, hey, it's television. In court Eddie is a winner, but at home he's losing his daughter's favor, and he knows it. So, with the daughter's annual Wilderness Team competition coming up, and the team's chaperone having a baby in his living room (I kid you not), Eddie volunteers to escort Naomi's team to the Spring Action Classic at Hulka Rock, a summer camp in the mountains. Even though Eddie's idea of roughing it in the wild is lighting the barbeque in his backyard, he decides this is the only way to show his daughter he can be a real parent. You can pretty much guess what comes next.
When he, his daughter, and three other girls arrive at Hulka Rock, he finds himself the only guy there, amongst what appear to be young girls from all over the state come to compete in various tag-team competitions. His daughter's team is the Killer Bees, and a rival team from Naomi's school is the Wasps. Wouldn't you know that the Wasps would be catty, snobby, WASPish cheaters, chaperoned by a pushy blonde mom, Denise (April Amber Telek), who's single and putting the moves on Eddie? And wouldn't you know that the head honcho of the camp, Ms. Hulka (Jane Lynch), would be a tough-as-nails martinet and that her assistant counselor, C.C. Turner (Julia Anderson), would be a sweetheart charmer?
You may recall the Michael Keaton film, "Mr. Mom," where Keaton played a husband who's unemployed and manages the household while his wife is out working. Here, in the 2009 release "Mr. Troop Mom," George Lopez plays much the same type of guy, only this time he's a widower trying to deal with his thirteen-year-old daughter and her wilderness team. Different times, same idea.
Now, you might wonder if a story about a middle-aged man and about 800 very cute, early teenage girls out in the wild would produce a situation in somewhat questionable taste. But nope. Nothing here to fuel a Palin-Letterman controversy. "Mr. Troop Mom" is a Nickelodeon original TV movie, so squeaky clean the MPAA gave it a G rating, something usually afforded only to Disney and Pixar cartoons.
The trouble with most "family" movies, though, is that the term is a misnomer. It seems to me that good family movies should interest both children and adults, movies like the aforementioned Disney and Pixar animations, "Mary Poppins," "The Parent Trap," or "Spy Kids." Yet most filmmakers really aim their family pictures at young children, with parents obliged to put up with the films while their youngsters enjoy themselves. So it is with "Mr. Troop Mom," a film aimed squarely at families with kids, the specific appeal primarily to girls in the ten-to-fourteen year-old range. If you're an older teen or adult, I make no promises. I found it all rather bland and antiseptic but totally without offense.
Stand-up comic and TV sitcom star George Lopez co-produced and stars in "Mr. Troop Mom," another of the actor's attempts to bring wholesome entertainment and a non-stereotypical Hispanic image to movies and television. It might seem odd, then, that the movie should contain an almost nonstop string of other stereotypes and clichés, until you recognize that for children, the stereotypes and clichés probably aren't trite or overused at all.
Lopez plays a widowed lawyer, Eddie Serrano (no coincidence, I'm sure, that his real-life spouse is Ann Serrano), with a thirteen-year-old daughter, Naomi (Daniela Bobadilla), to care for. Naturally, as with almost all movies aimed at this age group, parents are either absent, invisible, or in this movie barely tolerated by their offspring. Naomi thinks her dad is completely clueless, something only encouraged by the impudent au pair, Catalina (Elizabeth Thai), an Asian woman whose Dragon Lady attitude and difficulty with the English language make her one of the movie's more unabashed stereotypes. Of course, we can see the movie's message coming in the first few minutes: Parents and their children must share common interests and mutual respect if they are ever to love one another fully. Eddie must show that he can "connect" with Naomi, or he'll lose her to...whatever.
Eddie is a flamboyant lawyer whose shenanigans no judge would actually allow in a courtroom, but, hey, it's television. In court Eddie is a winner, but at home he's losing his daughter's favor, and he knows it. So, with the daughter's annual Wilderness Team competition coming up, and the team's chaperone having a baby in his living room (I kid you not), Eddie volunteers to escort Naomi's team to the Spring Action Classic at Hulka Rock, a summer camp in the mountains. Even though Eddie's idea of roughing it in the wild is lighting the barbeque in his backyard, he decides this is the only way to show his daughter he can be a real parent. You can pretty much guess what comes next.
When he, his daughter, and three other girls arrive at Hulka Rock, he finds himself the only guy there, amongst what appear to be young girls from all over the state come to compete in various tag-team competitions. His daughter's team is the Killer Bees, and a rival team from Naomi's school is the Wasps. Wouldn't you know that the Wasps would be catty, snobby, WASPish cheaters, chaperoned by a pushy blonde mom, Denise (April Amber Telek), who's single and putting the moves on Eddie? And wouldn't you know that the head honcho of the camp, Ms. Hulka (Jane Lynch), would be a tough-as-nails martinet and that her assistant counselor, C.C. Turner (Julia Anderson), would be a sweetheart charmer?
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