Review: Mayor Cupcake
Icon says it all.
What could have been a cute film (it had potential...it really did), failed miserably to deliver. From terrible acting, scripting, characterization and hideously ugly jean skorts, and god, some BAD stereotyping, the whole thing blew up in their faces.
The plot of this is pretty straightforward: Mother of three daughters (married to the chief of police) works at a diner/bakery as the "cupcake lady". She is pretty content in her life, even as the town around her seems to be quickly drying up. This is due to some corrupt politicians/citizens that have been taking money for themselves and their own goals, and have basically gotten the town in a tremendous amount of debt. The...middle daughter, still in high school, has been having some trouble in her civics class, and without permission, signed her mother up to run for mayor of their town, even forging all the paperwork. The election is won by the corrupt incumbent, but before it can be certified, he passes away, leaving the mayor...ship to Mary, the cupcake lady, whom has to find a solution to all the town's problems, and still bake her cupcakes, and run her household.
So, leaving it like that, it sounds like a fairly cute movie. And to a degree...it could have been. But I have some huge problems with it.
The biggest problem was the stereotyping and characterization in this movie. All of the characters are very wooden and one sided. Youngest daughter=sporty/wants to be the first female NFL player/inferred through dialogue is a lesbian. Middle daughter=spoiled princess, talks her way out of being in trouble, generally a pain in the ass. Oldest daughter=musician. Husband=cop/doesn't talk much/plays harmonica in the bathroom.
To go along with that, there is one major side character, the old mayor's daughter, Brittany. Brittany is portrayed by a plus sized actress, and portrayed as the "fat bitch" character. She and her father consume a ton of the mini-cupcakes, and Brittany is generally conniving and unliked by people in general. She is also depicted as cutting her own hair in a bowl cut; and can't seem to find anything that makes her happy, or any clothes that are in the least bit flattering on her figure. When her father dies, she scrunches up her face and screams, "I'm an orphan!" in about the most...fake and poorly written/acted place in the entire film.
As a recovering "fat bitch" (I have been called this and worse. I know, it's shocking! heh), I take offense to this image of a woman that is so miserable with herself she can do nothing but eat and bitch about things. I don't like this. Especially given the fact that she has to call her father "Mayor" even in their own home, and her mother is dead. No wonder the girl is miserable. Her mom is dead, and her dad isn't a dad to her, but almost an "employer". That wouldn't make anyone happy.
The daughter that got her mother into the mess pouts when she's about to get in trouble about how important her grades are to her, and that maybe one day she herself would be mayor, or governor. So, Mary lets her off the hook like it's no big deal that she's now stuck running the city because of her daughter. And not ONCE does Lana volunteer to help. If she likes politics like she claims to, and she was so willing to get her mother caught up in it, why didn't she even bother offering to help? It's only when her mother needs computer help that Lana lifts a finger...and that's over 3/4 of the way through the movie!
I could go on and on picking at how ridiculous the characterization was. The "big bad" car salesman could practically be found twisting the ends of his mustache and cackling in evil glee. It was ridiculous. And not charming or funny.
There was a couple very randomly tossed in guest appearances in the film: Gavin DeGraw and Greta Van Susteren. Now, Greta I got, because she was doing "interviews" with Mary (granted, I wasn't sure how "high school drop out baker runs a half-dead town" warranted being more than a blip on Greta's news life. But Gavin....they used one of his songs, and at one point Mary is singing to herself and he corrects the lyrics, and she tells him he's wrong. And...that's...it. Guh.
This movie sucks. Don't watch it. It's a waste of your perfectly good 85 minutes that you could be using to do something more productive. Like plucking your eyelashes out and punching yourself in the face. Don't. Waste. Your. Life. On. This.
There wasn't even a cute love interest for any of the girls to distract from the awful this film ended up being.
Granted, the cupcakes looked delicious...
What could have been a cute film (it had potential...it really did), failed miserably to deliver. From terrible acting, scripting, characterization and hideously ugly jean skorts, and god, some BAD stereotyping, the whole thing blew up in their faces.
The plot of this is pretty straightforward: Mother of three daughters (married to the chief of police) works at a diner/bakery as the "cupcake lady". She is pretty content in her life, even as the town around her seems to be quickly drying up. This is due to some corrupt politicians/citizens that have been taking money for themselves and their own goals, and have basically gotten the town in a tremendous amount of debt. The...middle daughter, still in high school, has been having some trouble in her civics class, and without permission, signed her mother up to run for mayor of their town, even forging all the paperwork. The election is won by the corrupt incumbent, but before it can be certified, he passes away, leaving the mayor...ship to Mary, the cupcake lady, whom has to find a solution to all the town's problems, and still bake her cupcakes, and run her household.
So, leaving it like that, it sounds like a fairly cute movie. And to a degree...it could have been. But I have some huge problems with it.
The biggest problem was the stereotyping and characterization in this movie. All of the characters are very wooden and one sided. Youngest daughter=sporty/wants to be the first female NFL player/inferred through dialogue is a lesbian. Middle daughter=spoiled princess, talks her way out of being in trouble, generally a pain in the ass. Oldest daughter=musician. Husband=cop/doesn't talk much/plays harmonica in the bathroom.
To go along with that, there is one major side character, the old mayor's daughter, Brittany. Brittany is portrayed by a plus sized actress, and portrayed as the "fat bitch" character. She and her father consume a ton of the mini-cupcakes, and Brittany is generally conniving and unliked by people in general. She is also depicted as cutting her own hair in a bowl cut; and can't seem to find anything that makes her happy, or any clothes that are in the least bit flattering on her figure. When her father dies, she scrunches up her face and screams, "I'm an orphan!" in about the most...fake and poorly written/acted place in the entire film.
As a recovering "fat bitch" (I have been called this and worse. I know, it's shocking! heh), I take offense to this image of a woman that is so miserable with herself she can do nothing but eat and bitch about things. I don't like this. Especially given the fact that she has to call her father "Mayor" even in their own home, and her mother is dead. No wonder the girl is miserable. Her mom is dead, and her dad isn't a dad to her, but almost an "employer". That wouldn't make anyone happy.
The daughter that got her mother into the mess pouts when she's about to get in trouble about how important her grades are to her, and that maybe one day she herself would be mayor, or governor. So, Mary lets her off the hook like it's no big deal that she's now stuck running the city because of her daughter. And not ONCE does Lana volunteer to help. If she likes politics like she claims to, and she was so willing to get her mother caught up in it, why didn't she even bother offering to help? It's only when her mother needs computer help that Lana lifts a finger...and that's over 3/4 of the way through the movie!
I could go on and on picking at how ridiculous the characterization was. The "big bad" car salesman could practically be found twisting the ends of his mustache and cackling in evil glee. It was ridiculous. And not charming or funny.
There was a couple very randomly tossed in guest appearances in the film: Gavin DeGraw and Greta Van Susteren. Now, Greta I got, because she was doing "interviews" with Mary (granted, I wasn't sure how "high school drop out baker runs a half-dead town" warranted being more than a blip on Greta's news life. But Gavin....they used one of his songs, and at one point Mary is singing to herself and he corrects the lyrics, and she tells him he's wrong. And...that's...it. Guh.
This movie sucks. Don't watch it. It's a waste of your perfectly good 85 minutes that you could be using to do something more productive. Like plucking your eyelashes out and punching yourself in the face. Don't. Waste. Your. Life. On. This.
There wasn't even a cute love interest for any of the girls to distract from the awful this film ended up being.
Granted, the cupcakes looked delicious...