By Glenn Dunks

Good intentions can take a movie a long way. Who doesn’t like good intentions?! The problem with good intentions is that they can too often mask deficiencies. And in the case of Mama’s Boy, those good intentions suffocate director Laurent Bouzereau’s ability to tell a story that might venture outside of the lines of the one its subject has a firm and unwavering interest in telling. It’s a lovely story of empathy, compassion, a mother’s love for her son (and vice versa) that nonetheless suffers from rudimentary structure, unadventurous editing, and is built around one talking head interview in particular that lacks spontaneity, as if reciting from a script. Considering it's adapted from a memoir, that probably makes sense.

The central figure here is Academy Award-winning screenwriter and social activist Dustin Lance Black and the film is about him more than the more interesting figure of his mother.