Review of Bad Moms (2016) by Lane Z — 16 Aug 2016

John Lucas and Scott Moore team up again to bring us what feels like the female version of Horrible Bosses, or perhaps the grown-up version of Mean Girls, or is it the domestic parallel to The Hangover? I'm not quite sure, and that's why I had a bit of trouble settling into this movie because 'Bad Moms' doesn't quite know what it wants to be after 90 minutes.

I will admit the movie grew on me after about 45 minutes or so, but that's entirely too long to hammer home the point: to see good moms turn bad before sort of returning to who they were before but with a renewed sense of purpose and expectations.

Mila Kunis is a steady lead. We get her cliched voice-over exposition with a few visuals in the beginning, but once those die off, I'm happy just to watch her act instead of fluff her own character. Kristen Bell plays a bit against type with a calm, obedient demeanor as the mom who's supposed to, I think, represent a woman who builds courage to stand up to an abusive/controlling husband? I'm not trying to say this films goes full feminism on us, but it's not hard to see it if that's what you're paying attention to in this film. But the real scene (and line) stealer is Kathryn Hahn. She nails just about everything about her role as a single party mom. Unfortunately, not enough was done with Christina Applegate or Jada Pinkett Smith's characters outside of their one-note antithesis roles to our main three.

There are enough hijinks in this to warrant a watch, and while it has the feel of a bunch of different movies Lucas and Moore have either helped write or direct in the past or that they've straight up taken themes from, Bad Moms just falls short with crossing the line into true raunchy comedy instead settling for a movie you probably would see with your mom.