Jamie Lee Curtis can play a lot of things. In slasher movies starting with Halloween (1978), she gets bloodied up as the survivor of a masked killer. A self-imposed exit from the horror genre led her into comedies. There was Trading Places (1983) but it was in A Fish Called Wanda (1988) she shifted status from a Scream Queen to a sex symbol. Flexing her comedic timing in those two, she brought a maternal naturalism to My Girl (1992). Then there was, Mother’s Boys (1993). Curtis plays Jude Madigan, who returns after leaving her family for three years. They have moved on, and she plans to put a stop to that, by any means necessary. Curtis is unsettling as this scorned mother, who really scorned herself. From the subtle moments to the more berserk, Jude will go to great extremes to insert herself back into the household. If she succeeds, it means very bad things to the Madigan family.
Jude makes it a point to visit her husband’s new girlfriend Callie (Joanne Whalley). The tension builds from the near unblinking stare Jude gives the woman before her. There’s a smile stretched across her face, yet it holds no kindness. Callie is the competition, it’s as simple as that. Despite the movie being about a “mother from hell,” Robert (Peter Gallagher) isn’t the entirely sympathetic father audiences can root for. Two times before the half-minute mark is up, Robert threatens Jude. Yes, this woman has abandoned her family, her current absence isn’t even the first time. But Robert’s reaction verges on violence from the get-go, before Jude demonstrates what she is capable of. He tells her directly he would “break her neck” if she surprises the boys with her return. He lets out intrusive thoughts with no shame in front of his lawyer when he wonders if the only way to avoid a custody battle would be “if he killed her.” This is obviously a toxic relationship, and not just on Jude’s part. In some ways, audiences can still give her sympathy. And then she breaks it.
Upon another visit to Callie’s office, Jude smashes a picture frame into her face to accuse Callie of the bloody aftermath. She further manipulates her own sons and tries to sexually entice Robert back into an affair. Jude knows she always had a closer bond to her oldest son, Kes (Luke Edwards), so she uses it. Gaining back some trust, Jude involves him into her semi-convoluted plan to eliminate Callie by the movie’s final act. It involves the family dog, a car with cut brakes, and the edge of a cliff. Jude doesn’t win in the end, but she isn’t entirely defeated either. It doesn’t take until the credits to roll to realize Mother’s Boys isn’t the most original of erotic thrillers. But the power of it really comes from Curtis.
Jude’s wardrobe is as transparent of the character as her actions are, while also being one hell of a look book for Curtis’ cinematic wardrobe. Her short, blonde hair is icy. She smokes and keeps dark sunglasses close by. Red and black are the consistent shades to her clothing — when she’s clothed, that is. Early on, Jude wears a red plaid jacket and skirt, but for all its color, there’s no warmth to it. This wasn’t the first time Curtis got to be a fashionista on screen. In A Fish Called Wanda (1988), her character of Wanda is a self-assured, manipulative, sexy con artist. Her wardrobe is full of pink fuzz and cheetah print. And while Wanda sleeps with all the major male characters, letting out moans of absolute pleasure when hearing a foreign language, that was all in good fun. Sex and being sexy are turned into devious tactics for Jude, with no joy or pleasure for anyone but herself. By the finale, she wears a white turtleneck, white pants, covering herself with a trench coat. This angelic shift out of her closet is ironic as she soon attempts to get rid of her Callie problem. The wardrobe makes her alluring, a dangerous trap for those in her orbit. It also places her as the constant outsider. An immaculate sense of style makes her look out of place within the casual looking Madigan family. And then there’s her lack of maternal instinct.
The movie is called Mother’s Boys, but Jude is not parent material. The sympathy and charisma from Curtis’s past movies make the audience lose trust in anticipating what Jude is capable of. Back in Halloween (1978), her role as Laurie is of a teen unaware of an advancing killer. She's shy around boys, teased by friends and at ease among the kids she looks after. She loses her friends but remains one steadfast protective babysitter. In My Girl (1991), Curtis is Shelly, a makeup artist who arrives for a hiring gig at a funeral parlor, mistaking it for a beauty parlor. Looking like Daphne if the Mystery Machine stopped at Woodstock, Shelly is out of place early on. It isn’t long before she grows close to the head of the parlor and widowed father Harry (Dan Aykroyd) and his hypochondriac daughter Vada (Anna Chlumsky). Being a potential stepmom, Shelly has her challenges, but she offers guidance when Vada is open to it. That is a far cry from her predator nature as Jude. For the movie’s most controversial scene, Jude discusses with Kes how she gave birth to him, showing off her surgical scar, her body fully exposed. Whatever is going on in Jude’s mind, this woman has no boundaries she is afraid to cross.
Jude’s mother Lydia (Vanessa Redgrave) gives the two biggest insights into her daughter's demeanor and actions. As a child, Jude had a close relationship with her father. One day he took her to his office. While she was in another room, he climbed out of a window and jumped to his death. This could answer why Jude is so extreme in keeping her family together, despite the contradictory act of abandonment. Then Lydia offers the next bit of insight. It’s suggested Jude and her father had an unhealthy close bond, verging on a childhood trauma Jude has buried deep within. As Lydia tries to talk about this to daughter, Jude does everything she can to silence her, including attempting to asphyxiate her. One gets the sense mother and daughter never brought this up at any time in the past. It leads to Jude smashing up her apartment, the movie fully slipping into the schlocky elements. Never mind the grave Jude digs for herself. By the closing moments, the Madigan family will not be forgetting her presence so easily. The movie’s theme is a creepy lullaby, an instrumental version playing in the beginning and returning for the end credits with lyrics: “I’ll be here, always near."
Known for surviving a movie monster, everyone's favorite Final Girl got to be the monster this time around. This was Curtis in her first villainous role, a dark character she hasn’t gone back to since. The closest thing might be her shady Vice President in An Acceptable Loss (2018), who signed off on a military action which led to many dead under false pretenses. The ‘90s would return Curtis to two roles she excels in. For True Lies (1994), she was a timid housewife thrown into a spy mission. With Halloween: H20 (1998), she stepped back into the slasher franchise that introduced her. In Mother's Boys, all the actress's charms that pulled audiences in, are tainted to make them uneasy. Like Jude to her family, this character remains a unique outlier in Curtis’s acting career.