MA15+
Directors: Jon Lucas; Scott Moore
Writers: Jon Lucas; Scott Moore
Starring: Mila Kunis, Kathryn Haln, Kristen Bell, Christina Applegate, Jada Pinkett Smith, Annie Mumolo, Oona Laurence, Emjay Anthony, David Walton, Clark Duke; Jay Hernandez.
I just had a Bad Mom moment. Leaving my notebook in the cinema. And not realising until I started drinking a glass of red wine and then fluffing in my handbag, looking for it. That’s about the extent I related to Bad Moms. The sense of panic. The humiliation if someone had started reading my scribbly notes. Like someone else finding your child and having to pick them up from a stranger… Jeez, it’s like pulling teeth.
If you’re not a mother, relating to Bad Moms is difficult.
Ami (Mila Kunis) is trapped in a world of kids, work, looking after her infantile husband, PTA meetings and everything that life can throw at you. When she finally gets knocked unconscious at her kid’s soccer match, to then be late (again) to the PTA meeting, and then be volunteered by everything-must-be-perfect super mom, Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate), to be the ingredients police at the upcoming bake sale, it’s enough.
Ami decides she’s sick of trying to be the perfect mom.
Now, along with fellow mothers, Carla (Kathryn Haln) and Kiki (Kristen Bell), she decides it’s time to be… A Bad Mom.
Thank goodness for the comic relief of Kiki and her cheeky, loud-mouth antics. It wasn’t that the acting was bad, there just wasn’t enough comic relief.
I had an expectation of many laugh-out-loud moments, and there were a few, but coming from Jon Lucas and Scott Moore as the writers and directors (the guys who co-wrote The Hangover I and Wedding Crashers) I expected there to be wider appeal.
I hear stories from my sisters and I can see how much pressure parents are under these days. Women have to work and keep: home, family, kids and society in general happy. Our mothers have worked hard for equal rights and now there’s this need to be able to do it all. Perfectly. I get that. And Bad Moms is a surprisingly insightful film.
Watching the girls getting into it because they’re sick of having to be perfect was a lot of fun. But to me? These girls needed sleep. For a week. So unlike The Hangover and The Wedding Crashers, I found this movie painful, and not in a funny way.
I can see a group of mums going to Bad Moms, to escape the house and kids for a couple of hours with glass of wine in hand and the relief that they’re not the only ones feeling the pressure of motherhood. And I congratulate Bad Moms on shining a spotlight on what a modern-day mother has to go through. But as a film, Bad Moms is made for a select audience.