ma ma

Name: ma ma
Genre: Drama
Released: May 20, 2016
Duration: 111 min
Rating: 31
Cast: Asier Etxeandia, Luis Tosar, Penélope Cruz, Teo Planell

2016

METASCORE

Generally unfavorable reviews based on 17 Critics

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USER SCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 7 Ratings

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Ma Ma (US)

Movie Details & Credits

Oscilloscope | Release Date: May 20, 2016

Starring: Asier Etxeandia, Luis Tosar, Penélope Cruz, Teo Planell

Summary: Just as Magda (Penélope Cruz) is diagnosed with breast cancer, she meets Arturo (Luis Tosar), a devoted husband and father in the midst of unspeakable loss. Their chance encounter leads both down a path of strength, grace, love, and rebirth.

Director: Julio Medem

Genre(s): Drama

Rating: R

Runtime: 111 min

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Critic Reviews

Arizona Republic - Randy Cordova

May 26, 2016

For all its missteps and machinations, the film mostly achieves its goals. In other words, have some Kleenex ready at the theater. Read full review

CineVue - Allie Gemmill

Jun 23, 2016

Heartstrings, prepared to be tugged at vigorously. Ma Ma is a quintessential tear-jerking melodrama that leans into its genre conventions heavily while still keeping an airy beauty to its characters and vision. Read full review

RogerEbert.com - Susan Wloszczyna

May 20, 2016

More important than the washed-out blue-tinged rooms, bleached white interiors and sun-blasted sea and sand is Cruz, who single-handedly breathes a sense of genuineness into this maudlin exercise even if she can’t cure all of its flaws. Read full review

The Seattle Times - Moira Macdonald

Jun 2, 2016

Eventually, the film muddles its way into a self-indulgent, overlong mess, complete with a flowerlike beating heart, a miraculous new life and a lot of soccer. Long before anyone in Ma Ma expires, the movie does. Read full review

The New York Times - Andy Webster

May 19, 2016

Penélope Cruz is an Oscar-winning actress we don’t see often enough in prominent leading roles. So how disappointing to find her having to carry Julio Medem’s florid Ma Ma, a melodrama only glancing at profundity. Read full review

Screen International - Allan Hunter

May 17, 2016

There is an undeniable cheesiness to the closing stage of ma ma that makes it hard to take entirely seriously. Read full review

The Playlist - Kevin Jagernauth

May 17, 2016

Falls flat on its face thanks to a severe lack of self-awareness and an air of dramatic self-importance. Read full review

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User Reviews

GreatMartin

Jun 1, 2016

Penelope Cruz is absolutely incandescent in “Ma Ma” as she seems to be in most Spanish pictures she appears in with Spanish directors leading her, more so than any American movie she has made. Always a beauty, Cruz, now in her 40s, has added a special look that “Ma Ma” takes advantage ofPenelope Cruz is absolutely incandescent in “Ma Ma” as she seems to be in most Spanish pictures she appears in with Spanish directors leading her, more so than any American movie she has made. Always a beauty, Cruz, now in her 40s, has added a special look that “Ma Ma” takes advantage of in every frame whether it is looking like an Audrey Hepburn twin with a gamin look or seeing her naked body before and after a mastectomy. Yes there is a screenplay written by Julio Medem, who also directed.

The story is what use to be known as a 3 hankie weeper and you might as well bring a tissue or two. She is the mother of a young boy, Teo Planell, who wants to be a soccer star and one day she meets a scout, Luis Tosar, who tells her that her son has talent. A few minutes later he hears by phone that his daughter and wife were in a car accident, that his daughter died and his wife was in a coma.

Oh yes let’s not forget she has a gynecologist, Asier Etxeandia, treating her for cancer who, by the way, sings. Add to that he and his wife are going to adopt a Russian orphan. By the way her husband, and father of her child, Alex Brendemuhl, is on summer vacation with one of his blond female students.

Forget the story and concentrate on Cruz with short hair, long hair, a wig, no hair, pregnant and swimming, her mastectomy scar after the operation or her full breasts before the operation, living in the real and an unreal world, in her garden with a red rose in her hair talking to an unborn child or any other scene she is in holding your eyes no matter what is going on screen.

“Ma Ma” is a showcase for Penelope Cruz’s many sides of beauty plus the ability to make a soap opera screenplay hold an audience’s attention for 110 minutes and even get a few tears from them.… Expand

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