It strikes Henderson that he won't ever have a good relationship with the opposite sex until he explores his relationship with his mother, Beatrice. He decides to challenge the theory that you can't go home again. John moves back in with his mother, gets all his old furnishings out of the garage, and tries to recreate the bedroom of his youth. Mother, meanwhile, seems befuddled, at least on the surface. Mother and grown son first struggle through basic superficial conflicts.
More serious concerns begin to emerge, though.
The script, by Brooks and his regular collaborator, Monica Johnson, deals with each issue humorously, and with a surprising degree of warmth. However, enough of Brooks' cynical and neurotic screen personality survives to please the filmmaker's longtime fans. In her first major film role in a quarter-century, Reynolds is a revelation. The veteran star of Singing in the Rain perfectly captures the subtle nuances and complex layers within Beatrice, gradually revealing the character's unexpected depth while never losing sight of the need to keep us laughing. Though psychologists and family therapists may find the film's ending too pat, it offers a satisfying conclusion to a film that is designed, after all, as a comic fable and not a serious case study of a dysfunctional family.