What makes Mother, a comedy from the relentlessly wry and witty writer-director-star Albert Brooks, funny is how insightfully it portrays the stereotypical relationship between a grown man and his mother. What makes it so good is how it then breaks the stereotypes and deals with its characters not as representatives of many, but as singular individuals.

And they're delightful characters. Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds, her first starring role in a film in eons, have a magnificent chemistry, playing off each other with perfect comic timing. As is typical of Albert Brooks comedies, Mother proves yet again that comedies can be funny and intelligent at the same time and that sometimes subtlety works better than over exaggeration.