ROTTEN TOMATOES: Best and Worst Movie Moms

Best and Worst Movie Moms

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Bad Moms

Joan Crawford
Appears in: Mommie Dearest (1981)
Portrayed by: Faye Dunaway

If Christina Crawford is to be believed (and some claim she isn't), her adoptive mother Joan was a better actress than a parent. Much better. Frank Perry's camp classic Mommie Dearest shows Crawford hacking off Christina's hair, giving away her birthday presents, slapping her, using her (and her siblings) for public relations purposes, and tackling her with a force that would make Lawrence Taylor wince. (And let's not even start on those wire hangers.) In a scenery-chewing -- nay, gobbling -- performance, Faye Dunaway became one of cinema's most notorious examples of bad parenting.

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Mama Bates
Appears in: Psycho (1960)

Poor Norman Bates. All he wants to do is listen to Beethoven and devote time to taxidermy. And yet his mom nags him all the time into maintaining his failing motel. (Spoiler Alert!) No wonder business is slow; Mrs. Bates demands that Norman take a Ginsu to anyone foolish enough to stop by. (At least she taught him how to do housework, since the shower in room #1 is clean as a whistle.) A lot of moms are possessive of their children, but most are at least kind enough not to take up residence in their sons' brains -- or badger them from beyond the grave.

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Eleanor Iselin
Appears in: The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Portrayed by: Angela Lansbury

It's never a good thing when parents try to live out their ambitions through their children. It's especially uncool to use your kids as pawns in a plot to overthrow the government. In the chilling Cold War drama/satire The Manchurian Candidate, Angela Lansbury plays Eleanor Iselin, the wife of a bombastic senator and fellow communist sleeper agent, uses a deck of cards as a trigger to control her son, Korean War vet Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey). Raymond is forced into a plot to assassinate a presidential candidate (and his mother even kisses him far too deeply, just to prove how much she loves him). Lansbury was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but it's unlikely she'd get a seal of approval from Parenting magazine.

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Margaret White
Appears in: Carrie (1976)
Portrayed by: Piper Laurie

You thought your mom was a pain in the neck during high school? She was June Cleaver compared to Margaret White. Carrie's backwoods fundamentalist mother believes just about everything is sinful -- including puberty, the act that conceived Carrie, and, well, Carrie herself. She isn't terribly fond of the prom, either -- and although she ends up being proven more or less right on that count, that doesn't exactly help her case in the end. In giving life to one of Stephen King's most hateful characters, Piper Laurie holds nothing back; watching her performance, you'd almost never know she viewed Carrie as a comedy, or that her ill-timed laughter ruined several shots.

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Beverly R. Sutphin
Appears in: Serial Mom (1994)
Portrayed by: Kathleen Turner

In her defense: She just wanted to keep order. It's crucial, after all, that fashion rules (no white after Labor Day!) are upheld, and pesky neighbors are dealt with accordingly (Mrs. Jensen deserved to be clubbed like a seal with that leg of lamb). This Martha Stewart of Murder is part homemaker, part Waters-Guttersnipe-Baltimorean. Her kids were ideal, and she was too -- until a parent teacher conference gone wrong sent her perfectly coiffed suburban existence into a life of celebreality violence. Like Birdie said: "You know, Mrs. Sutphin, you're bigger than Freddy and Jason now, except that you're real."

The Honorable Mentions

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Elaine Robinson and Mrs. Stifler
Appears in: The Graduate (1973), American Pie (1999)
Portrayed by: Katharine Ross, Jennifer Coolidge

Mrs. Robinson didn't just personify the cringe-inducing ideal of the sexually aggressive mom, she was the original cougar, hunting for prey her daughter's age. She was sultry, "mature," had some righteous lingerie -- and then refused to share her lover with her daughter. Does this make her a bad mother? Technically, loverboy Ben (Dustin Hoffman) had little association with Elaine (Katharine Ross) prior to his affair with her mom. It's not as if she actively seduced her kid's buddy -- that was the work of the first-ever MILF, Stifler's mom (Jennifer Coolidge in American Pie). She did more than contribute a new category to porn. She was unabashed (on the pool table!), indiscreet, and unlike Mrs. Robinson, unwed. Then again, it's not like she would ever stand in the way if her son ever wanted to get it together with Finch.�

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Written by: Jeff Giles, Tim Ryan, and Sara Schieron.

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(1-20 of 27 posts) | Reply

jokerboy1991 writes:
on May 09 2008 07:04 PM

Great list... I just wish that one mom who yelled "WIRED HANGERS!!!", that wouldve been funny. Also just saw Speed Racer Mamma Racer was petty cool mom. Or that lady in "the fly", I mean come on giving bearth to a kid that might be a fly! Now thats a loving mother.

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Sputnik99 writes:
on May 09 2008 07:53 PM

What about Leia Thompson (sp?) in the Back to the Future Movies? Would she count as a good or a bad mom?

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blattman writes:
on May 09 2008 08:35 PM

I am shocked and appalled that Glen Close's performance as Jenny Garp in The World According to Garp did not make the list. What an incredible mom. How about Stella Dallas? What a parental sacrifice

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jokerboy1991 writes:
on May 09 2008 09:36 PM

Oh lol.. I just thought about the mom in Dazed and Confused who pulls the shotgun out on Ben Afleck for chasing after her kid.

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jokerboy1991 writes:
on May 09 2008 09:37 PM

Or Ralphy's mom in the Christmas story, not telling the dad ralphy beat up a kid or getting the younger brother eat by saying "show me how the piggies eat"

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Testicular_Cancer writes:
on May 10 2008 01:08 AM

Well, except Helen DIDN'T leave Jack-Jack with the babysitter; she left him with Dash and Violet. Dash and Violet left Jack with the babysitter. (Also, Jack-Jack wasn't manifesting any unusual abilities up to that point.)

But yeah, I'd give top honors to Helen just for the "real-life bad guys won't hesitate to kill you" and "protect your identity" speeches to Dash and Vi in the cave. She told them the truths they needed to hear, but coming from Holly Hunter it didn't sound so harsh.

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dracula68 writes:
on May 10 2008 01:19 AM

Hey this was supposed to be a list of Best AND Worst movie moms. We only got the best (*yawn*) now what about the bad ones (YAY!)

1) James Cagney's mom in "White Heat"
2) Damien's mom in "The Omen". Because she's dead. So she don't smell too good. And she's a jackal.

3) Mary Tyler Moore in "Ordinary People". Because nothing says "I'm your mom so of course I don't blame you for your brother's death" like martinis, a cleaning fetish, and ten tons of denial.

4) Lady Macbeth. Now of course she wasn't a mom but she said that if she was a mom she'd "Change her milk for gall" and "bash its brains against the rocks" showing that combination of diet AND discipline

5) The Mother in "The Godfather" -- especially in Part 2. We only ever see her once very briefly when she's talking to Connie, but it's when Fredo confesses to his brother "mom always told me I was left at the doorstep by gypsies" that we're witness to the kind of passive emotional cruelty that hurts to depths only a bad mother is capable of delivering.

And I can only conclude this list by saying

LOOK AT ME, MA! TOP OF THE WORLD!!!!!!!!

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dracula68 writes:
on May 10 2008 01:24 AM

Okay NOW I see there was a page 2 to that article (DUH, DOI!). Well, my list kicks a-- too.

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tomwaitsjr writes:
on May 10 2008 08:03 AM

Elaine Robinson was a great Milf. She was actually only a few years older than Hoffman. . .

I HATE FORREST GUMP! HIS MOM SHOULD HAVE HAD AN ABORTION!

And, Diane Keaton in GodFather II was cool. . . "I had an abortion, and it was a boy!"

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

You guys also forgot the Mom in Boogie Nights.

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caboose388 writes:
on May 10 2008 10:07 AM

I was kinda hoping to see the lil old lady from Stop or My Mom Will Shoot, that was the kind of mother I always wanted, the Uzi wielding kind

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Tim Ryan writes:
on May 10 2008 10:22 AM

In reply to this comment (#1728140)
Check page two for your wire hangers fix.

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RedRing writes:
on May 10 2008 02:03 PM

I would have guessed Jason Voorhee's mother would have made it (or now that I think about it.. maybe Freddy's mom in the good category :p )

But I DID successfully guess Mrs. Bates and Serial Mom .

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skletonkee writes:
on May 10 2008 03:24 PM

This list is nothing without Jobeth Williams for best mom. NOTHING!!!

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dracula68 writes:
on May 10 2008 04:39 PM

In reply to this comment (#1729106)
Did we ever really hear that much about Freddie Krueger's mom? Oh, yeah, that's right. She got herself locked up with mental patients for that weekend. And then Dad turned out to be Alice Cooper. Son of a mental patient and a rock star -- your life would be one long VH1 special.

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jokerboy1991 writes:
on May 10 2008 06:38 PM

In reply to this comment (#1728792)
Oh cool.

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wiggins writes:
on May 10 2008 07:46 PM

jennifer griffiths in blow.

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agniyo writes:
on May 10 2008 11:15 PM

You don't mean Elaine Robinson, should be on the list, do you? You mean that MRS. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) should be, right?

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agniyo writes:
on May 10 2008 11:20 PM

You don't mean Elaine Robinson, should be on the list, do you? You mean that MRS. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) should be, right?

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kikuchiyosesa writes:
on May 11 2008 09:27 AM

Best mom #7....... Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom!

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BluMizu writes:
on May 11 2008 12:58 PM

Faye Dunaway was so good in "Mommie Dearest" that people actually thought was WAS Joan Crawford...

Great performance.

And 100 points has been added to the house of whoever noted that Mrs. Parr ( Elasti-Girl/ Mrs. Incredible) DIDN'T leave Jack- Jack with the baby sitter.

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