Bad Moms
Director: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Stars: Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, Kristen Bell
Duration: 100 mins
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd

During the first hyperactive 15 minutes of Bad Moms we are regaled with scenes of a typical day in 32-year-old Amy’s (Mila Kunis) life. She juggles her part-time job and her demanding boss; deals with her 11- and 12-year-old kids’ school needs; drives them to and fro; does the shopping; and prepares a delicious supper… while her mortgage broker husband Mike (David Walton) complains he’s exhausted after dealing with two conference calls at the office.

Yet, Amy just can’t take it anymore and a clash with Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate), the president of the school PTA, makes her snap. Amy befriends two similarly-stressed women; single mom Carla (Kathryn Hahn) and harried mother-of-four Kiki (Kristen Bell) and after a few drinks too many, the trio decide they’ve had it with trying to be all things to all people.

While the bad mums of the film are girls who just need to have fun, Bad Moms the movie can’t decide whether it wants to be a social commentary on what working mums have to deal with today – and other films have been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, and proved that the more things change the more they stay the same – or simply a comedy about mums who are fed up with the title.

As the former, it doesn’t work. That the film was written and directed by two men, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, speaks volumes.

It is all couched in some genuine warmth, thanks in no small part to the quartet of actresses at its core

They claim they drew inspiration for the script by seeing their wives dealing with the pressure that comes with dealing with family, kids and so on. And, yet, while their script paints a picture all-too-familiar to its target audience, it doesn’t offer anything by way of solution.

It doesn’t help the cause that the men in the movie are painted as stereotypically obnoxious. Amy’s husband is a philandering slacker-type; Kiki’s husband a control freak; Carla’s is simply absent. If not that, they’re your obvious beefcake: Amy’s love interest is the hunky widower Jessie.

Also, I can’t work out whether the fact that nary a man is to be seen at the PTA meetings – except for the principal – is a deliberate move on behalf of the filmmakers or just a terrible omission.

That said, there are a couple of moments that hit the mark – at one point, just as you want to hurl abuse at the screen at Amy’s children for being incapable of preparing their own breakfast, we are treated to a particularly effective scene where she gives her son Dylan a dressing-down for behaving with a sense of entitlement typical of white privilege; but overall, the impression is that the filmmakers just want to play it for laughs.

Truth be told, it does work much better as a comedy. Given that writers Lucas and Moore also wrote The Hangover, it is hardly surprising their film boasts a strong element of women behaving badly.

Their language and attitude often take a dive into crudeness, oftentimes simply for crudeness’ sake the sake of it – although, an extremely explicit scene where Carla is describing a particular sexual situation to her friends is indisputably uproarious. Never has the line “I’ll never wear this sweatshirt again” been so funny.

Yet, it is all couched in some genuine warmth, thanks in no small part to the quartet of actresses at its core. As the three new best friends, there is remarkable chemistry between Kunis, Kahn and Bell; Kunis’s semi-normal Amy striking a perfect balance between scene-stealer Kahn’s foul-mouthed and brash Carla and Bell’s twin set-wearing, mousey Kiki – who often fantasises about being injured in a car crash so she gets to spend two weeks in hospital being taken care of.

Christina Applegate is clearly having a ball as the stuck-up epitome of perfection Gwendolyn – a woman who enlists ‘Bake sale police’ to ensure no wheat, sugar, eggs, and nuts (among many ingredients) are used in making products for said event. Yet, the actress gets to show some depth as Gwendolyn inevitably gets her comeuppance and the façade of perfection begins to crumble.