Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot
By Peter John Gardner
Do you ever have those awkward moments with your parents where they temporarily forget that you're an adult and treat you like you're ten years old again? I'm 26 years old, have been living on my own since 18, and my mom still regularly asks me if I've been brushing my teeth and eating right. When I lived in Vero Beach, my mom would always start cleaning whenever she came by for a visit. That got annoying because she would organize my belongings and throw out what she thought was loose paper and junk mail on the kitchen table. The papers on the kitchen table was usually my schoolwork.
Picture a whole, 90 minute movie based around these awkward and annoying moments, and you have the punctuationally challenged "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot". This movie thinks those moments are funny, and perhaps with the right writer they are. Thing is, the movie just makes the viewer feel uncomfortable and awkward as you watch scenes of Stallone and none other than Sofia from "The Golden Girls" as mother and son.
You can pretty much guess the plot from the title of the film and the cover of the dvd. Stallone's a cop, his mom comes to town, ends up getting involved with his police work, hilarity ensues.
There is a scene where Stallone is trying to talk a man out of jumping off a building. Defying any sort of logic, the police let Stallone's mother, a character that hasn't even been introduced to his coworkers yet, take control of the megaphone while Sly is up on the ledge trying to talk to the guy. Mama Stallone starts telling the suicidal guy how awesome her son is and informs the ladies present that he is single. The jumper tells Stallone, "Jeez man, you're worse off than I am" and heads inside the window. Cut to a news clips showing Stallone still on the ledge, and the reporter telling us about a man threatening suicide. Stallone should've jumped.
Lesson learned from the film? Your parents will always be your parents. No matter how old I get, I'll always be the baby boy in their eyes, and even as one grows into adulthood, they'll always look after me and take care of me. Now that I'm older, I don't really mind when my friends hear potentially embarrassing stories about my childhood, and I feel fortunate to have a mother that is not as overbearing as Sofia in this movie. If anything, my mom is turning out to be more like Betty White's character, Rose, from the Golden Girls.
No matter how old one gets, you'll always have a little bit of schmootz on your cheek that your mom will wipe off with a tissue in front of all your friends.
