BAD MOMS – Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Katherine Hahn. Photo courtesy of eOne
Bad Moms plays like some demented fusion of Mean Girls and a look at the Bridesmaids ten-to-fifteen years later – with just a dash of Three Stooges.
Oddly enough, that peculiar hybrid really rocks!
Amy (Mila Kunis) is close to being a supermom – with her part-time job at a start-up coffee company, a husband (Mike) and two young kids (for whom she does homework and history projects), she looks like she has it all. Until she catches her husband wanking to a cute girl online – and learns it’s been going on for months.
When she arrives late to an ‘emergency’ PTA meeting called by mean mom Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate) and is drafted to be PTA Bake Sale Police, she snaps – shocking everyone in the room including herself.
BAD MOMS – Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Katherine Hahn. Photo courtesy of eOne
Hitting a bar, she finds herself drinking with mousy, oppressed, good girl mom Kiki (Kristen Bell) and loose cannon (and totally raunchy) single mom Carla (Katherine Hahn) – and they decide to just be bad moms.
Freed from the need to spoil her kids, Amy embraces her bad momhood and soon the three are ditching work for movies and generally making their kids develop responsibility for themselves. Kiki even stands up to her alpha-wannabe husband.
Gwendolyn can’t let this stand, so she and her minions hit Amy where it hurts – getting her daughter taken off the soccer team’s starting lineup.
This does hurt Amy, but she decides that if the PTA presidency gives Gwendolyn so much power, then she’ll run for the position – which only serves to make Gwendolyn more furious and unscrupulous.
BAD MOMS – Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Katherine Hahn. Photo courtesy of eOne)
Throughout, there’s also a budding romance between Amy and a hunky widower named Jessie (Jay Fernandez) – who’s everything her soon-to-be-ex isn’t.
Bad Moms is the movie for moms who’ve had it up to here (and the men who love them) – it’s fast-paced without losing sight of the reality of the types of moms it’s presenting. It’s raunchy (almost as raunchy as Bridesmaids but without bodily fluid/excretion jokes) but lets us see our trio in unguarded quiet moments, too.
A lovely postscript – the stars and their moms talking about their relationships – runs through the closing credits and serve to underline the movie’s genuine heart.
Written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, Bad Moms is smarter than it needs to be; more poignant than expected, and funnier than most comedies released this year.
Final Grade: A-