Once comic actors reach a particular career stage, they often choose one of two paths: A) They stop being funny and start being all Hallmark heartwarming, i.e., by growing a beard and playing a psychiatrist. B) They accept unambitious, work-for-hire roles in mass-market family comedies about some combination of dogs, weddings, road trips, Christmas, or babies. This is often a prelude to cover features in Modern Maturity, so it's weird to see young Seth Rogen in such a broadly targeted family movie.
In Anne Fletcher's buddy comedy The Guilt Trip, Rogen is Andy Brewster, an organic chemist frustrated in his entrepreneurial efforts at selling the natural cleaning product he has invented. He comes home to New Jersey to visit his widowed mother, Joyce, played by Barbra Streisand. After she tells her son about a sweetheart with whom she'd broken up to marry Andy's father, he Googles—wait, actually, GoogleBings, which is weird—the guy's name and finds his address in San Francisco. About to embark on a multicity sales jaunt, he invites his mom along, ostensibly to spend time with her, but with the hidden agenda of hooking her up with the old boyfriend.
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