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Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
Released on: March 9th 2021.
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Estelle Getty, JoBeth Williams, Roger Rees, Ving Rhames
Year: 1992
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Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot - Movie Review:
Director Roger Spottiswoode has made some good movies. This isn't one of them.
Joe Bomowski (Sylvester Stallone) is a tough as nails L.A.P.D. sergeant with a penchant for action and an on again/off again romance with his boss, Gwen Harper (JoBeth Williams). When she learns that instead of calling her to reassure her he was okay after his latest incident he went out for some beers with the boy's she's upset. Even moreso when word gets back to her he was on the phone all night. She suspects another woman - and she's right, sort of, but not in the way she expected to be. Joe was trying to get his mother on the phone. It didn't work.
A few hours later, Joe's at the airport to pick up his mother, Tutti (Estelle Getty) and her little dog who have arrived to stay with him for a few days. When she washes his gun and ruins it, she decides to get him a new one and, as one thing leads to another, winds up involving herself in a case involving some dangerous gun runners. Hilarity, theoretically, ensues.
Except it doesn't. Once the novelty of seeing Getty cast alongside Stallone wears off - which takes about fifteen seconds - this movie is a total dud. There's one strange dream sequence involving Stallone in a diaper that is weird enough to work but that's really about it, and you'll find yourself intentionally looking for things to distract yourself with, like Stallone's strange shirt collection or what various background characters are doing in any given scene. Obviously humor is subject but this film just isn't funny. There's nothing interesting going on, it plays out EXACTLY how you expect it to and it offers absolutely zero surprises along the way. There's nothing unique here and what should have been a perfectly fine disposable family-friendly comedy falls so, so flat that it isn't even funny. Literally.
Getty basically plays the same character here that she did in Golden Girls, a doting mother who can't help but interfere. Stallone, who has done alright with comedy here and there, lacks charisma and brings little of value to the role aside from his screen presence. The score is as generic as the script and the direction is stale. This movie sucks.
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot - Blu-ray Review:
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot arrives on region A Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment in AVC encoded 1080p high definition framed at 1.85.1 on a 25GB disc with the feature taking up 21.4GBs of space. This was likely taken from an older existing master and it looks to have some mild digital noise reduction applied to it. Detail is a little on the soft side and there isn't much noticeable film grain here. On the plus side, colors look excellent and black levels are nice and strong but the picture lacks texture. It's serviceable enough, sure, just don't go into this one expecting it to look amazing.
The only audio option on the disc is an English language 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo track. Optional subtitles are offered up in English only. No problems here, the audio is clean and nicely balanced, the often times cringe-inducing dialogue is always easy to understand and both the effects and the score sounds more than decent.
Aside from menus and chapter selection there are no extra features on this disc but it does come with a neat retro VHS style slipcover.
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot - The Final Word:
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot should have been a moderately amusing time waster but it isn't even that, it's just an abysmal film all around. Mill Creek's Blu-ray is watchable enough if a few steps from reference quality but it devoid of any extra features (which is good, because it saves me from having to suffer through them).
Click on the images below for full sized Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot Blu-ray screen caps!
Haven't seen it since then.
This movie looks like a pile of dogshit. I remember the trailer.