Sick Watch: 'Stepmom' is the Mom that Stepped Up

Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts show us we can cry over a petty bitch.

Last time on Sick Watch, I mentioned an important rule in cancer movies: the person with cancer has to be likable because you have to feel bad that they’re dying. That likability can be personified in many ways, like a saccharine wholesomeness or a joyful, freewheeling spirit. The latter was the core character trait of Kate Hudson’s Marley in the batshit, quirk-a-thon “A Little Bit of Heaven.”

However, when a main cancer character has many folds, not all of them pretty – some even mean and petty and kind of shitty – and their illness still makes you curse the gods for bringing cancer into the world, that has a way of sticking with you. You can see a person who is ill as a whole, more closely resembling a person in your own life who is sick, helping you unpack deeper fears around death and breathing new life into the typical clichés cancer movies usually bring.

This is what happens in Stepmom.

Released in 1998 and directed by Chris Columbus (Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), Stepmom stars Susan Sarandon as Jackie, a stay-at-home mom of two navigating her ex-husband’s relationship with a cool, young fashion photographer played by Julia Roberts. As you can imagine, they’re not besties. Jackie really goes out of her way to make Isabel, Roberts’ character, feel like an dumb bitch, and listen, sometimes she kind of is. She made the mistake of falling in love with a hot baldy played by Ed Harris and now has to be a parent to two kids who hate her ass because she’s fucking their dad when all she wants it to drink cappuccinos in a beret in the East Village. Love will force an artsy bitch to be the mom that stepped up.

So yeah, Jackie can’t stand her and does shit like buy tickets for her bitchy tween daughter Anna (a young Jena Malone) to see Pearl Jam even though Isabel had asked Jackie if she could take her to the concert to try to win the little bitch over. Jackie had said no and then guess what she does? Gives Anna the tickets IN FRONT OF ISABEL and says something like thanks for the idea, whore. What a cunt. Truly, a mean ass power move. This is exactly what a redhead named Jackie would do.

This is a Jackie. No one’s ever been more of a Jackie, sorry to Jackie Kennedy.