Kitty Mammas
This screwy mockumentary about a medical trial to impregnate women with baby cats isn't particularly funny, and unexpectedly wanders into maudlin territory.
“Kitty Mammas” has a pretty decent premise for a mockumentary: four women sign up to participate in a medical trial in which they are impregnated with a cat fetus, which they will carry to term and then keep. The subjects range from a certified crazy cat lady to a harried middle age mom to a lesbian who needs the money for her wedding to a lawyer wannabe who will use the $20,000 to pay for law school.
Goofy jokes and hairball hijinks are about to issue forth, I assumed.
Strangely, this ostensible comedy makes quick work of all the obvious feline-related humor, and then wanders unexpectedly into maudlin territory. An abusive ex-husband shows up and makes trouble. A religious mom is prepared to ostracize her daughter for procreational blasphemy. A marriage is upended and threatened. Another mother is withholding of money set aside for an education, not to mention her emotional connection with her kid.
Here I was expecting pranks and guffaws, and somehow the movie becomes “Days of Our Nine Lives.”
(A lousy joke, I know… but better than most in the film.)
Seriously, the movie starts feeling like a soap opera, complete with tinkling “very special moment” music and contrived confrontations. And when the kitties finally do arrive, it’s treated as a straight-up endearing moment as they emerge from human wombs.
Paul Sun-Hyung Lee plays Dr. Han, the doctor leading the trial. What the scientific benefit is of putting cats in women’s uteruses, the movie never attempts to explain. He’s a straight shooter and nice guy, though he has some ethics troubles in his past and another strike means his career is likely over.
Janet Porter plays Sylvia, a middle-aged mom who desperately wants a cat so much she’s not even telling her husband, Tom (Billy MacLellan), a guy who works a little too hard at being a domestic god, about it. That’s going to turn out well.
Vienna Hehir is Maria, a gay woman about to get married to her girlfriend (Zarrin Darnell-Martin) and needs money to pay for the ceremony. Her parents are very religious, so that sets up a conflict that plays out with 1-2-3 predictability.
Kathryn Kohut plays Joan, an aspiring attorney who can’t pay for school because, get this, her mom doesn’t want her to throw her resources away on a law degree when there’s a perfectly lucrative career as an artist waiting for her. A hundred thousand pauper painters hurl their easels at the filmmakers.
Morgan Kohan has the most fun as a cat vlogger named Rose, who is just as insanely caught up in all things kitty as you imagine. She’s not a loony loner, though, and actually has hundreds of thousands of followers. She manages to spill the beans about the idea of becoming pregnant with a cat, causing a major internet backlash.
This leads to a somber discussion with Joan about the online abuse women face, which is a really good discussion to have but this is not the movie to have it in.
I liked the cynical charm of Stephanie Belding as Pauline, Dr. Han’s nurse, who throws out inappropriate jokes at every turn and doesn’t care a fig about cats, but likes the paycheck. Helene Robbie plays Dr. MacKenzie, a veterinarian brought in to help oversee the study who has a romantic past with Dr. Han. Darryl (Drew Nelson) is her jerk ex-husband, who uses his perch as an investigative journalist to sabotage the study.
I’m not sure where to put “Kitty Mammas.” The idea and title suggest something really zany and tongue-in-cheek, sort of a takeoff on “The Office” or “Parks and Recreation.” But then the movie gets all serious about baby cats in women, which is a awfully silly thing to do.