Were it not for the impending release of the far superior “Other People” in a few weeks, it would be tempting to call “The Hollars” the death knell of the “constipated white New Yorker gets his groove back by going home to his dysfunctional family when Mom gets cancer” movie. As it is, “The Hollars” feels so painfully familiar and so dramatically undernourished that even the great Margo Martindale can only do so much with this cliché-riddled script.
Martindale plays matriarch Sally Hollar, who collapses one morning in the bathroom, curling iron in hand. In a film like this, though, her health issues serve only as a catalyst for the film’s protagonist, Sally’s son John (John Krasinski, who also directed), to get his act together.