In Bad Moms – the new comedy from the writers of The Hangover (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore), who in this case also direct – Amy (Mila Kunis) has a seemingly perfect life: a great marriage, over-achieving kids, a beautiful home and a great job. In reality, she’s over-worked, over-committed and exhausted to the point that she’s about to snap. And then her husband cheats on her … well, kind of.
Fed up, she joins forces with two other over-stressed moms (it is an American film, after all), Kiki (Kristen Bell) and Carla (Kathryn Hahn), on a quest to liberate themselves from conventional responsibilities. They go on a wild, un-mom-like binge of long overdue freedom, fun and self-indulgence and put themselves on a collision course with PTA queen bee Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate) and her clique, Vicky (Annie Mumolo) and Stacey (Jada Pinkett Smith). Until Amy intervenes, all the other moms know not to cross Gwendolyn, who is the self appointed arbiter of acceptable behavior at the school.
The cast also includes Jay Hernandez as a hot single dad, Clark Duke as Amy’s hipster boss and Emjay Anthony (The Jungle Book) and Oona Laurence (Pete’s Dragon) as her children. The best part of this film is undoubtedly when the female actors (all of whom are mothers themselves) sit with their own mothers just before the final credits. The actors listen as their real mums talk about them and how they didn’t always get it right. That, of course, is what this movie is all about.
In essence though, it is simply trying to cash in on the shock value of other titles, in which bad behaviour and foul language are common place. Bad Moms is thin at best, despite the efforts of Kunis (Jupiter Ascending), who is probably the only actor I was convinced looked and sounded natural in filling her role. Otherwise, much of the acting and many of the scenes appeared forced.
Comedy at its best is very difficult to get right 100 per cent of the time. Bad Moms’ script is simply uneven. It is almost like a series of sketches around the one theme sewn together. We – the audience – immediately get that it is well meaning, things are going to go pear shaped and then everything will work out in the end, so it is the journey that matters. In this case, it is a rocky one, lurching from cute to raunchy to as outrageous as the filmmakers can come up with or feel they can get away with. To sum up, it is okay at best, but certainly nothing special or at all memorable.
Rated MA, Bad Moms scores a 5½ to 6 out of 10.
Director: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Cast: Christina Applegate, Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis
Release Date: 11 August 2016
Rating: MA15+
Alex First
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television
