It’s What’s for Dessert

Alice Cronin-Golomb knows a lot about the human brain. Her research into vision problems resulting from neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s has improved thousands of lives.

A dedicated professor, she has also found a highly creative and playful way to inspire her students to unlock the mysteries of the brain. And it all has to do with Jello, which she uses to create realistic-looking brains.

How did Cronin-Golomb, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of psychology and director of the Vision and Cognition Laboratory and the Center for Clinical Biopsychology, come about such arcane culinary knowledge?

Back in 1996, her former student, Tracy Dunne,now a CAS lecturer in psychology, made a brain out of Jello for Cronin-Golomb’s tenure party. Cronin-Golomb liked the idea so much she started making her own from a recipe she found on the internet. The key, she says, is using a proper brain-shaped mold and a mixture of watermelon Jello and light evaporated skim milk, to give the organ a realistic gray color.

Two years ago, she decided to take her experiments with brain-themed cooking to a new level, by getting her students involved. It began when she asked her two daughters for ideas to improve her Neuropsychology 338 course, which explores the relationship between brain disorders resulting from head injuries, strokes, and degenerative diseases and abnormal behavior. Cronin-Golomb was looking for ways to build more interactivity into the class, to keep pace with a generation that is less tolerant of pure lecturing. Her then-15-year-old daughter, Lucy, asked, “Why don’t you let them bake brain cakes?”

When she heard the group’s reasoning for not pursuing the Gage skull replica, Cronin-Golomb was pleased. “I was very excited that the reason they stopped was not because it would have been hard to make,” she says, “but because recent research that the students read about has called into doubt the traditionally accepted trajectory of the rod through Gage’s brain, and that would have led their brain cake to be anatomically inaccurate.”

Cronin-Golomb’s class helps lay the foundation for many students’ careers in psychology and neuroscience. Students study neuroanatomy and learn how to make connections between psychological traits and the functioning of the brain. They also examine various neurological and psychological disorders and how they are diagnosed and treated.

Andy Brewster (Rogan) is a chemist who developed a natural cleaning product from renewable resources. He’s sunk his last pennies into the project and has been making the rounds of large retailers hoping to sell it.

He’s about to go on one last cross country sales trip before throwing in the towel. After flying to New Jersey, Andy is staying at his mother’s home and plans to leave from there on the eight-day journey. At the last minute, he invites his widowed mom, Joyce (Streisand), to accompany him.

And there you have the template for what no doubt was intended to be a heart-warming voyage of discovery, where mother and son find common bond and understanding. But “The Guilt Trip” breaks the mold — and not in a good way.

Both Brewsters are caricatures rather than full blown characters. As a result, what the press notes describe as “mashugana situations” are cringe-inducing affairs. What else would you call an early scene where Joyce tells her son that his father was a rebound? Her true love was a man named Andrew Margolis, who wasn’t interested in getting married. So when Andy’s dad proposed, she accepted — and named her only son after her former suitor.

The entire plot revolves around that unlikely revelation. Andy locates the man in California, discovers he’s still single and asks his mom to accompany him, though keeping secret his plan to reunite the pair.

Along the way the two have road trip misadventures — the “mashugana situations” that are presumably intended to be funny. For example, the first night when they check into a motel the desk clerk assumes they are a couple. Streisand looks good for a woman her age —70 — but not that good.

Don’t let the fact that Joyce’s last name is Brewster or that she named her son to honor a living person fool you. She is definitely Jewish. This is, in part, why I so much wanted to like ” The Guilt Trip.” I come from that environment and rarely see it portrayed with the affection and humor hinted at in the trailer.

But Joyce isn’t just a stereotypically annoying, overbearing, suffocating coupon-loving Jewish mom. She’s an annoying, overbearing, suffocating coupon-loving Jewish mom totally oblivious to her actions which defy logic and common sense. Sitting in a business office, not even my mother would spit on her hand and fix a cowlick on my hair. And that’s saying something.

Andy is no better. It’s possible that a person with a masters degree in organic chemistry smart enough to develop an FDA-approved cleaning product is ignorant about marketing. (Does the FDA really approve cleaning products?) It’s possible that he would pay to manufacture 10,000 bottles without a customer in sight, and that he would give the same pitch over and over again, knowing no one laughs at his jokes and that buyers’ eyes glaze over when he begins. But is it really possible that he would give pitch after pitch without once demonstrating how his product cleans?

Very few things these caricatures do are organic to the story, and destroy what little momentum the film has. So who’s to blame?

The most obvious target is screenwriter Dan Fogelman, but that’s a bit too easy. Fogelman based the film on a cross-country trip he took with his own mom, who coincidentally was named Joyce. But I am willing to bet that the screenplay he wrote is not the one that you see on the screen.