Stepmom (1998)

Julia Roberts from Mirror Mirror and Susan Sarandon from Enchanted team up in this touching drama about a woman named Jackie(Sarandon)who's husband(played by Ed Harris) divorces her and is now engaged to a much younger woman named Isabelle(played by Roberts)and has two children from her ex. Of course when Jackie first meets Isabelle she detests her and would do anything to get her kids back even if it was signing a contract to keep her kids. But Jackie of course in hiding a painful secret(yup what I am going to say is like what Nicholas Sparks would do in his novels been turned into movies). Jackie has cancer. Of course she doesn't tell her kids or her ex husband about it and would go to a private clinic to get herself looked after. But how long has she left to live? And will she get treatment?From the man that brought you Mrs Doubtfire and Home Alone as well as the first Harry Potter film,this is a real tearjearker to watch,especially near the end where I was left teary-eyed in the end. The cast was spot on. Susan Sarandon was excellent as the bitchy ex wife to Ed Harris who is dying of cancer. While Julia Roberts(sporting a much lighter hair-do than her frizzy curly red hair)was great as Isabelle the photographer that steal Ed's heart. The story to its credit has been done to death and like I have mentioned this movie might as well been made into a novel by Nicholas Sparks as it carries the same cliché as his novels(even though he never wrote a novel on this movie).Bottom line if you haven't seen it and if its on TV I recommend it to you or if you want you can just buy it on DVD.B-7/10

I loved every bit of it. I remember watching this together with my whole family and hugging my mom at the end. The love they show for their mother is gold-worthy. It's also a realistic movie which makes it even better. Their mother doesn't like the stepmother at first because she still loves her ex-husband and she hopes to get back together but when she sees that their love is real she puts her hate aside and just tries to live through it all. The fact that the mother accepts the fact that another woman will take care of her children when she's no longer there had me in tears. It's a real tearjerker and a really good movie to watch with the whole family. It's a movie that will stay in your mind and heart forever. If you haven't watched it yet, this is your chance. You'll thank me later.

Director Chris Columbus continues to explore the family turmoil of divorce in the tearjerker Stepmom, a story that pits the birth mother against the new mother.This comedy drama stars Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon, and Ed Harris together with Jena Malone and Liam Aiken.Jackie, a one-time book editor, is now the consummate soccer mom juggling the schedules of her two kids in her New York ranch outside of Manhattan. Her ex-husband Luke, who gets weekend custody of the kids, is living in the city with a woman half his age named Isabel, a high- fashion photographer with a strong sense of style. Since Luke is always away at work, the burden of getting the kids ready for school when they are with their father falls on Isabel, and she just isn't the nurturing type. The story heats up, however, when Jackie learns that she has cancer. Facing the horrors of medical tests and chemotherapy, she realizes that, should something happen to her, her kids will be left with this irresponsible Isabel as their mother, especially after Luke proposes marriage to her. What ensues is part parenting lesson, part competitive parenting, but 100 percent family bonding, as Jackie must learn to allow Isabel to be part of her world and her family.The movie manages to touch on that chord because it shows how an ambitious woman might feel hampered by the responsibility of children just because she's fallen in love with their dad.It's an issue that haunts millions of second wives everywhere, and Julia Roberts portrays that role extremely well. Susan Sarandon's performance as a mom about to be replaced by her ex-husband's new girlfriend has a lot of bite, and it's a shame the script opted to marginalize and trivialize her plight in its final reel.The film tries to avoid complexities in the screenplay and it wimps out in the end, solving the problem by giving Sarandon a terminal illness. Instead of allowing Jackie and Isabel's relationship to unfold on something less than a high note, the movie has to quell its best thing with a false payoff because it doesn't know what to do with real life. That is the reason why this film falls short its potential to have been a great film.

As a Comedy, it stunk. It had only a couple of funny moments that were shown in the trailers - no other funny parts...In actuality, it is a tear jerker. I don't know why they classify it as Comedy or why the trailers gave the impression of a Comedy. As a real stepmom, myself, I was hoping to see a lighter-side comedy about relationships that can be difficult and sometimes pretty tough and even heartbreaking; instead, it was about a relationship that was forced/forged through tragedy - not much to laugh about in the tragic second half of the movie.That being said, it was well written and well executed and as a Drama it was really good. The acting was superb and the writing was excellent. I was disappointed because I had been in the mood for a Comedy when I watched it.