You'll Like My Mother Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

You'll Like My Mother Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson June 16, 2017

Note that this review includes some spoilers.

Part of the allure that You'll Like My Mother has on a viewer is the task of figuring out the genre conventions it tinkers with and predicting the turns its plot will take. Recently widowed and very pregnant Francesca Kinsolving (Patty Duke) has come to wintry Minnesota from California to meet the mother of her late husband, Matthew Kinsolving (a Vietnam flier), for the first time. As she arrives at the Kinsolving estate (actually the famous Glensheen Mansion in Duluth where the picture was filmed), subjective shots of someone watching her are shown (e.g., behind a curtain window) as she approach the front steps. Mrs. Kinsolving (Rosemary Murphy) has been expecting Francesca but is less than thrilled to see her. Mrs. Kinsolving's teenage mute daughter, Kathleen (Sian Barbara Allen, going all Method) stands meekly in the background, morose that one of her kittens has drowned. Mrs. Kinsolving isn't exactly a welcoming hostess but leads Francesca into the family room for a small chat. A figure appears to be standing outside the room keeping an eye on them. Initially, I surmised that You'll Like My Mother would be about a haunted house (in a way, it is). While the movie contains horror elements, it works more as a straightforward melodrama/thriller in a single setting.

The film is centrally about family lies and hidden pasts. Mrs. Kinsolving spins a spider web of lies in front of Francesca. She poses ostensibly as Matthew's mom but is in fact his aunt. Her sister-in-law Maria supposedly died of a heart attack but was she at all responsible for her death as part of a stratagem to nab the family estate? Seated across from her at the table, Francesca sees what a real bitch Matthew's aunt is. Mrs. Kinsolving tells Francesca that she deprived her of Matthew when he spent a two-week furlough with his wife just prior to his premature death. The aunt also resents Francesca's soon-to-be-born baby and pledges to disown the infant. Another prevarication of Mrs. Kinsolving's is the nephew whose artistic portrait adorns a bedroom wall and who she claims she has not seen or heard from in a long time. She is stealthily harboring her son, Kenny (Richard Thomas), in the house for an incident I will refrain from divulging for those who haven't seen the film. Although critics at the time seemed to appreciate Rosemary Murphy as an accomplished screen performer, they repelled against her portrayal of the "bad mother." For example, the Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas rightly characterized her as an "icy psychopath" and implicitly blamed Mrs. Kinsolving's behavior (as well as Jo Heims's script) for bringing down the movie. Thomas wrote harshly about You'll Like My Mother: "this has got to be one of the sickest pictures of this or any other season....it's impossible to understand how anyone could enjoy it without being at least a little sick himself." While Mrs. Kinsolving's motives are avaricious and actions contemptible, the film can be enjoyed as a suspenseful yarn as the quartet of characters play sly cat-and-mouse games around the house.

Francesca Kinsolving arrives at the family estate.

While this four-character drama could easily be adapted for the stage, Lamont Johnson and his two cinematographers open things up that work well on a cinematic level. One memorable shot occurs when Francesca eavesdrops on Kenny and his mother from the upstairs. The camera travels seamlessly down a laundry chute and into the kitchen. Another noteworthy device is Francesca's interior monologues. She sometimes narrates to herself, musing about the goings-on in the house and what she should do next. The device is also used so Francesca can communicate with Matthew's spirit. The title of the film refers to what Matthew told Francesca but the mystery is, who will she like? Did he really mean Maria or her evil sister-in-law acting as the family matriarch?

You'll Like My Mother is also a curiosity for actor Dennis Rucker, who bores an uncanny resemblance to a young Robert Redford (see Screenshot #6). Rucker plays Red Cooper, Francesca's bus driver and occasional visitor to the estate. If the script has a main flaw, it doesn't exploit the would-be romance that has potential to blossom between Red and Francesca. Granted, Red is a secondary character and his role is more of a red herring to the plot. Rucker certainly makes the most of when he's on screen and has some of Redford's charisma. Rucker appeared in several films (albeit bit parts) throughout the seventies and eighties. He also enjoyed a prolific career on the small screen. But he never broke into the mainstream as a major actor and one wonders what kind of career he could have had on the big screen.

You'll Like My Mother Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

You'll Like My Mother has had a very limited run on home video. It was not released on VHS until 2000(!) and presented, rather surprisingly, in pan and scan. Universal recently put it out as a DVD-r under the studio's "Vault Series." Thankfully, Shout! Factory has brought it to Blu-ray with a pretty solid video transfer. The label uses the MPEG-4 AVC encode and presents the film in its original theatrical aspect ratio on this BD-50. The main feature carries video streams averaging 29994 kbps and the disc boasts a total bitrate of 33.40 Mbps. You'll Like My Mother was a low-budget title for Universal in 1972 and the film's texture and thickness is typical of film stocks used during the seventies. The main titles reveal some dirt and debris on the camera lens. During the first half, there are quite a few white speckles. The grain structure appears scattered across the first two or three reels; in the second half, it's more judiciously spread out across the frame. The movie's interiors and costumes predominately consist of oak brown, black, dark blue, and green/turquoise. Those colors are well pronounced even amid the coarse grain. Exterior shots of the mansion appear soft with a pastel look that befits the winter. Optical point-of-view shots are purposely hazy for Duke's character (see #20).

Shout! has broken the movie up into a mere seven chapter stops.

You'll Like My Mother Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The sole audio track Shout! includes is a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono (1643 kbps, 24-bit). The master that Shout! obtained from Universal is in very good shape but, as to be expected, demonstrates limited amplitude. I listened to the track twice and experimented with the range of sound fields (notably stereo) on my receiver to see if I could receive a wider dispersal of score and f/x on both fronts. It's best to leave your receiver to the default mono so all sound goes through just the core center channel. Dialogue is comprehensible and Gil Mellé's score sounds acceptable for a 1972 recording.

I watched the movie with the optional English SDH active and they transcribed a great majority of the spoken words.

You'll Like My Mother Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• NEW Interviews with Richard Thomas and Sian Barbara Allen (55:39, 1080p) - in place of a commentary track, Shout! has recorded brand new interviews with Richard Thomas (Kenny) and his onscreen sister Sian Barbara Allen (Kathleen). It should be noted that Thomas and Allen got to know each other well on You'll Like My Mother and forged a long romance following completion of the film. Thomas and Allen are interviewed separately here. They're very well-prepared and present a wealth of anecdotes and production stories (particularly working with director Lamont Johnson). Allen explains a number of the differences between the film and its literary basis, Naomi A. Hintze's eponymous 1969 novel. Thomas and Allen's remarks are intercut with scenes from the film. In English, not subtitled.

• Photo Gallery (2:16, 1080p) - with a photo collage in the background, individual lobby cards and EPK pictures from You'll Like My Mother become a little bigger as they each come toward the center of your screen.

• Theatrical Trailer (2:22, upconverted to 1080) - an antiquated full-frame trailer that shows a variety of print flaws. Although this is a teaser, it gives a lot of the plot away. It may be an effective marketing gimmick by Universal but it portends the movie's finale so don't watch it if you've never seen the full feature.

You'll Like My Mother Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

You'll Like My Mother is a fun if minor dramatic thriller that features uniformly quality performances from its four leads. Shout! Factory's Blu-ray easily surpasses its home video antecedents and should be considered the definitive edition of the film unless it gets a complete remastering and receives a 4K scan. The extended interviews with Thomas and Allen add an abundance of context to the film's making. RECOMMENDED.