Review of Bad Moms (2016) by Emily H — 12 Aug 2016

This is a movie so deeply engrossed in mommyhood and manufactured binaries thereof that it will make any man with the misfortune of seeing it in the theater too threatened to leave with its crowd. It leans heavily on dated story arcs, fear of male genitals, the "lazy man" trope and a slathering of female empowerment to engage a naive audience willing to believe life's nuance is that simply summarized.

My wife and I both stopped laughing halfway through - she felt insulted that her intelligence would be so underestimated and I was flat-out uncomfortable to be among an audience laughing at its hateful jokes. It suggests that all men and boys are dumb as nails and deserve ridicule. The one decent guy here is the kind of well-built, wide-jawed gentile that would reflect womens' fantasies of a perfect, infallible guy off a magazine cover. It suggests that marriage should be so fragile that one mistake and one 2-minute long therapy session are enough to guarantee its doom and that children will just shrug it off. I won't let it off without chiding it for the terribly obvious product advertisement, either.

To its credit, Mila did an incredible job acting out the role she was given. Her co-stars were able to carry her performance, which is itself a laudable feat. Some jokes are very well executed (if poorly written). The cinematography is also well-done, and though there were a couple hiccups here and there, they weren't distracting.

My recommendation is that you see this one when it hits Netflix. If you want a good laugh, you can sympathize with its protagonists and you don't mind a one-sided story, I can see its appeal. I have no issues with the premise that mothers need to be valued and supported, but I do not support a production that carries out its message in such an insincere and insulting way.