Review: A Bad Moms Christmas

They're baaaack! After being a surprise hit last summer, it was inevitable that a sequel would be fast-tracked for Bad Moms, which was one of many female-led comedies in recent year proving that women could misbehave as badly as their male counterparts. Now along comes A Bad Moms Christmas, set not too long after the events of the first film, which plunks our central trio down in the midst of one of the most maddening times of the year: the holidays.

All any mom wants is for their kids to have an amazing Christmas, Amy (Mila Kunis) shares at the beginning of the film. Yet, despite the fact that it is her favourite time of year, Christmas is also the most stressful, especially when she's trying to make it as perfect as possible for her kids. There are gifts to buy and wrap, decorations to be hung, the children's school holiday shows to be attended and falsely enjoyed, cooking and cleaning to be done - and there's never enough time. As if that's not enough for Amy to contend with, her controlling mom Ruth (Christine Baranski) and puppyish dad Hank (Peter Gallagher) are coming to visit.

Amy is not the only one having to cope with her mother. Ever-chipper Kiki (Kristen Bell) has Sandy (Cheryl Hines), who is so ridiculously clingy to the daughter she gave birth to at 18 that she thinks nothing of wearing pyjamas and sweaters bearing Kiki's likeness, buying the house next door so she can be closer, or giving feedback to Kiki after watching her and her husband make out in the bedroom. Meanwhile, gleefully amoral Carla (Kathryn Hahn), now working in a spa ("When did every woman in America need a completely hairless vagina on Christmas?"), is shocked to find her gambling pothead of a mother Isis (Susan Sarandon) on her doorstep after having barely seen her for decades. Predictably, each daughter will reach her breaking point with their respective mother as they slowly but surely crumble under the weight of passive-aggressive criticism, the guilt of not being good enough moms to their own kids (well, maybe for Amy and Kiki), and just getting through the holidays.

Though many of its jokes strain, A Bad Moms Christmas does well enough to satisfy those entertained by the shenanigans of the original film as it's more of the same - the predecessor's standout sequence of the moms tearing up a grocery store is recreated here as the moms drunkenly rip through a shopping mall, giving Santa lap dances before escaping with a Christmas tree stolen from a Lady Foot Locker. Writer-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore concoct a pretty funny scene with Carla using her lunkheaded teenage son as a shield during a trampoline dodgeball game and there is that meet-cute between Carla and fireman by day, exotic dancer at night Ty (Justin Hartley) as she waxes his balls and marvels at the size of his manhood ("It's like a parking cone!").

As with the first film, Hahn is the comic standout of the leading trio but she is bested by the imperious Baranski, who swans through the film like the badass that she is. Ruth's constant attempts to upstage Amy, her eternal obliviousness to Amy's Latino boyfriend Jessie (Jay Hernandez) - "I was just literally in the car with you," he says when she introduces herself to him for the hundredth time - and her insistence that her way is the right way are made fresh and hilarious by Baranski's impeccable delivery and timing.

A Bad Moms Christmas

Directed by: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore

Written by: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore

Starring: Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Christine Baranski, Susan Sarandon, Cheryl Hines, Jay Hernandez, Justin Hartley, Peter Gallagher, Oona Laurence, Wanda Sykes, Christina Applegate