Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Larry Donner, an author with a cruel ex-wife, teaches a writing workshop in which one of his students, Owen, is fed up with his domineering mother. When Owen watches a Hitchcock classic that seems to mirror his own life, he decides to put the movie's plot into action and offers to kill Larry's ex-wife, if Larry promises to murder his mom. Before Larry gets a chance to react to the plan, it seems that Owen has already set things in motion.
Throw Momma from the Train is a genial Hitchcock parody built around the Strangers on a Train premise, executed with reasonable wit but uneven execution. The plot is a serviceable comic riff on the source material, benefiting from a clear comic premise though it struggles with tonal consistency between dark comedy and broader slapstick. DeVito and Crystal have genuine chemistry and both deliver solid performances, with Anne Ramsey earning an Oscar nomination for her ferociously memorable Momma — a genuine highlight. Cinematographically it's functional at best, a fairly unremarkable mid-80s studio comedy look with little visual ambition. The Hitchcock homage gives it some novelty as a comedy-crime hybrid but it's not a wildly distinctive film. The ending is somewhat limp, defaulting to a sentimental resolution that undercuts the darker comic energy established earlier.