Review: Bad Moms
Amy Mitchell (Mila Kunis) is overstressed, overworked, overly concerned with doing it all and being perfect, and overdue for a breakdown or, if seen from another angle, an epiphany.
Amy is 32, lives in Chicago, has two kids (Oona Laurence and Emjay Anthony) and a husband (David Walton) who may as well be a third child. She's the one running around getting breakfast for the kids, dropping them off at school, going into work at a hipster startup company where she races from meeting to meeting to meeting, picking up the kids, driving them to whatever after-school activities they've signed up for, scuttling back to school to attend plays or PTA meetings, and then arriving back home just to get dinner on the table. Bad Moms carries audiences along in Amy's daily whirlwind; by the end of that opening sequence, we're just as exhausted as she is.
If Amy has any time to herself, it's to bawl her eyes out in her car over what a bad mom she is. She's far from being what she thinks she is - if anything, she's so hands-on and accommodating both at home and at work that she's essentially turned herself into an indentured servant by overindulging those around her. So it's all too inevitable that she reaches her breaking point during one 24 hour period that begins when she discovers her husband has been having an online affair for the past ten months and ends when she once again finds herself in the crosshairs of the passive-aggressive perfectionist Stepford Mom that is Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate). Refusing to kowtow to any more of Gwendolyn's demands, Amy quits the PTA and decides to do away with her daily drudgery and indulge in some very bad behaviour (which is still relatively tame despite the film's R-rating).
Kunis has always been an appealing performer, but the truth of the matter is that Amy is not that interesting a character. Too much of the film's focus is tipped in her favour and not enough attention is paid to either Kristen Bell and particularly Kathryn Hahn. The former plays stay-at-home mom of four Kiki, who harbours a multitude of dark thoughts beneath her pert and polite exterior. The latter is divorced single mom Carla, the film's raging and anarchic id who encourages Amy and Kiki to let loose and embrace their inner crazy. Hahn pretty much torpedoes everyone off the screen and shows no mercy to the viewers as she delivers one funny line after another. "I'd rather go to Afghanistan than another kid's baseball game," she matter-of-factly declares of supporting her son's sport of choice. To the latest weirdness uttered by Kiki: "I feel like everything that comes out of your mouth is a cry for help." "Are you trying to get laid or adopted?" she cracks at the sight of Amy's woeful wardrobe choices as she prepares for a girls' night out. "That bra will be the death of your vagina," Kiki adds as she and Carla poke and prod at Amy's so-called sexy bra.
That scene is a lot of laughs, though Bell underwent similar barbs from Melissa McCarthy earlier this year in The Boss, which is more than thematically adjacent to this film as are Mean Girls and Sisters to a lesser degree. That sense of déjà vu dampens the fun; so does the perpetual use of slow motion during scenes where the moms are drinking, partying, or leaving a wake of destruction during their rampage at their local supermarket. Once or twice is fine, but to deploy it every single time smacks of a lack of imagination from writers-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who are known for penning the Hangover films. The duo do well in piling on the raunch whilst still finding moments of truth in moms who act out as a means of preserving their sanity. These are women whose fantasies revolve around having alone time away from their daily drudgery - a quiet breakfast "by myself" is Amy's ideal whilst Kiki wouldn't mind being in a car accident and laid up in the hospital for a couple of weeks to have some peace and quiet.
Bad Moms has many an occasional stumble, not least of which is pitting the so-called bad moms against Gwendolyn and her court. If anything, having Gwendolyn as the lead character would have been more intriguing. This is not a patch on Kunis, but the breaking down of Gwendolyn would have reaped far more laughs and made the bad behaviour all the more outrageous. Nevertheless, this is a film that has its heart in the right place and will both endear and entertain thanks to Kunis, Bell, Hahn, and Applegate.
Bad Moms
Directed by: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Written by: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Starring: Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Christina Applegate, Jada Pinkett Smith, Annie Mumolo, Oona Laurence, Jay Hernandez, David Walton, Clark Duke, Wendell Pierce, Wanda Sykes, Emjay Anthony
