One-Liners: Mama Mia ...

Oh for two.

CATFIGHT (C+) - A writer-director approaching middle age -- a male one -- thought it would be a hoot to have two women -- Sandra Oh and Anne Heche -- play two former friends who meet up again and beat the shit out of each other. More than once.

Niche filmmaker Onur Tukel creates a cartoonish revenge flick without providing the motivation for the altercations between the women. He also tries to create a dystopian near future in which a Trump-like leader accelerates the decline of the United States by starting a war in the Middle East, reinstating the draft (and lowering the age to 16) and dismantling the health-care safety net. The disturbing events are presided over by a slapstick Greek chorus consisting of a smarmy talk-show host and a farting sidekick in a diaper.

If none of this is really believable on any level, what are we to make of it? Tukel comes across as a knock-off of Bobcat Goldthwait (especially "God Bless America") with even less subtlety. He posits Heche as Ashley, a struggling artist trying to conceive a baby with her wife, Lisa (Alicia Silverstone), and Oh as Veronica, a controlling, wine-guzzling rich trophy wife who suffocates her teenage son. When Veronica shows up at an event catered by Ashley and Lisa, the old friends revive some vague old dispute from college, and the first round of fisticuffs ensues.

Veronica ends up in a coma, and Ashley's finds success with her hellish images, which find an audience in a time of war and unraveling of society. Veronica awakes from her coma broke and alone. With their roles reversed, Veronica will eventually seek out revenge. Round 2. Amazing coincidences ensue, as the fates of the women continue to mirror the other's (when each is down on their luck, they must turn to the assistants they'd been mean to when there's nowhere else to turn).

There will be a Round 3, but it is hoped that the women will make peace. Whether they do or not depends on your interpretation of happy endings. But Tukel is all over the map with this one. Nothing coheres. The presence of Tituss Burgess from "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" calls to mind that silly Netflix sitcom and serves to point out that Tukel has more of a basic-cable sensibility than a big-screen one.

Heche and Oh give it their best, but they are flailing with this material. A few supporting characters manage to amuse, including Dylan Baker as a coma doctor and Ariel Kavoussi as Ashley's baby-voiced assistant, Sally, whose simple drawings of happy blue bunnies contrast with Ashley's horrifying nightmares on canvas. You grasp for whatever you can find appealing in this relatively amusing trifle.

MIA MADRE (C) - Nothing manages to stick with this ponderous drama, again from the male mind, about a female filmmaker struggling through a rough patch in her life.

Nanni Moretti ("We Have a Pope") offers a muddy script and a sluggish pace to tell the story of Margherita (and understated turn by veteran Margherita Buy), whose mother is dying, whose relationship ending, and whose latest production is getting bogged down by a vain hack of an American actor, Barry (John Turturro). Moretti cycles through these cross-sections of Margherita's life, whether sitting loyally at her mother's bedside or squabbling with Barry on the movie set.

Margherita seems numbed by the idea of approaching middle age alone; and her mother's demise only drives home the point that we die alone. Buy is awfully glum throughout, and this does not make for compelling drama. Turturro is amusing as the bone-headed buffoon who threatens to derail Margherita's film.

But it's the moping that dominates. And with a running time that pushes two hours, this one is too much of a slog.