Rent The Single Moms Club (2014)

The Single Moms Club review by Alyse Garner - Cinema Paradiso

A film full of potential the Single Mom’s Club could have been a light and surprisingly progressive story of a group of single mother’s coming together and learning to support one another as they all attempt to work their way through the everyday and life-long struggles of parenthood; unfortunately a number of stupid storylines and the overly romantic and man-filled ending leaves the film feeling cheap and frankly somewhat insulting.

Brought together by the principle of their respective children’s prep school five women from different backgrounds come together to help plan a fundraiser for the institute; despite a number of rather painful stereotypes by and large the characters on display are fun and (mostly) likeable. The relationships that develop between them offer an insight into the changing family dynamic of the 21st Century and also create a fair amount of entertainment and joy.

However, a reliance on clumsy plot twists and unrealistic confidences turn what could have been an interesting and pleasant character study painful to watch: it’s hard to care about characters when you simply don’t believe the situations they find themselves in.

Making the first half of the film at least bearable is the performances from the five leading ladies, Nia Long, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Amy Smart, Zulay Henao and Cocoa Brown all work hard to bring their individual characters to life and, though some of them are a bit obvious, give their backgrounds and storylines a bit of depth. So things might have all worked out fine if, and apologies for the spoiler here, the screenwriters hadn’t insisted on matching each and every lady up with a man by the end of feature.

Now one or two romances I could believe, they might even have given me a warm and content feeling, however, pairing every one of the single mum’s up with a man by the end of the film’s 90 minutes is not only unlikely but also suggests, quite blatantly, that these women can’t actually cope with their parenting deities; supported by female peers or not the message I got from the Single Mom’s Club is essentially that single motherhood is not a viable option and that bagging a man is more important that sharing, supporting and guiding women.

And they say feminism is dead?