I’ll say this, Bad Moms will make you really want to call or give your mom a hug after you see it. The movie really does mean well, highlighting the real struggle of being a good mom. But, razor thin characters and a real lack of incisive observation will leave you hoping for better. At least they tried.
Amy (Mila Kunis) is someone any mother will understand: a do-everything salt of the earth mom. She holds a job that underappreciates her, does everything for her kids and her husband, and leaves no time for herself. This lifestyle leaves her so stressed out that Amy up and quits at head mom Gwendolyn’s (Christina Applegate) 2 hour emergency PTA meeting about dangerous desserts at bake sales. Amy ends up at the bar with Kiki (Kristen Bell) who was inspired by Amy’s walkout, and Carla (Kathryn Hahn), resident mommy love luster. The three strike up a friendship and loosen their parenting style to relieve the endless stress. Amy even draws the attention of widower Jessie (Jay Hernandez), who strikes feelings in her she’s lost in her separated husband Mike (David Walton).
Bad Moms is written by two men (granted, two smart men, they wrote the Hangover). This movie needed a deeper female perspective to pack a deeper comedic punch in the big set pieces. Bad Moms is at its best with its tiny observations: inadvertent lessons about responsibility get taught when fighting a hangover from the night before or motherly fantasies include quiet meals alone. Those observations feel lived-in and very relatable and made me laugh harder than the wild montages in shopping malls covered by famous pop songs. These writers just assume when women go wild they go wild like men; I would have liked more input from the plethora of funny ladies in this film, like when they get a chance to improvise (like in the bra discussion scene).
Also undercutting the earnestness of the idea is razor thin characters around Mila Kunis. It’s like the writers took one look at their story and created a checklist: ok, we need a bitchy antagonist and some lackies, a sexually awakened sidekick, a dimwitted follower for Amy, whiny kids, a hot dude, a doofus husband, and a crappy boss/co-workers. It’s clear the writers think crazy stuff every 5 minutes or so will spackle over any issues with the movie. However, as we all know, if you don’t develop empathy for your characters, you feel nothing when the finale comes acalling. Personally, Mila Kunis does the best she can with a thankless leading role, playing a more restrained but fun version of Cameron Diaz’s Bad Teacher. The characters that I cared more for are Kristen Bell’s Kiki and Kathryn Hahn’s Carla. Bell plays up Kiki’s earnest naivete to fun results, throwing herself into every shenanigan the group gets themselves into. More importantly, Kathryn Hahn has needed more attention for some time, and her Carla is the foul mouthed prophet that Zach Galifanakis or Melissa McCarthy usually plays. If this movie does well, that means more roles for Hahn, who elicits laughs in every scene she’s in, regardless of the material.
Bad Moms is the incarnation of a mother in movie form. It’s really trying to be important, working to make you like it, trying to do stuff that you like, and mostly failing at it. However, at the end you feel like giving this movie a hug and saying, thanks for trying. And even though you probably won’t have too many feelings during Bad Moms, the end credits will certainly have you near tears. Maybe that should have been the movie instead.