Bad Moms (2016). R 100 min (Comedy)
I went to see this comedy with an open mind. Its from the writers of The Hangover Series, which is very hit of miss. I knew going in there could be a lot on man-hating in the film, due to the nature of the storyline. However, I wanted to see if it was a raucous Animal House styled comedy, or more of a PC thing like the recent Ghostbusters reboot (which I reviewed recently). The lead actress Mila Kunis is from Black Swan and Jupiter Ascending. She has a nice face. She really isn’t very funny though. And she isn’t really hot enough to hold my attention in a lead role. Everything tends to seem scripted in modern comedies like this. There never seems to be any improvisation, and the conversations never seem very fluid, but rather perfunctory and situational.
This flick started off okay. Kathryn Hahn is funny as the raunchy slutty MILF sidekick. Then the plot starts to kick in. It revolves around her bitching about her part-time job and how hard it is to drop kids off at school (when the kids could probably bicycle there anyways). PTA meetings are so hard. Why can’t the state just take care of her brats all day and night and leave her alone – so she can drink and do her nails? Movies like this always spend too much screen time with annoying unfunny child actors. The kids are either dopey or complainers these days. I miss movies like the original Vacation (with Chevy Chase) or Adventures in Babysitting where the child actors were actually entertaining. The film The Sitter with Jonah Hill from about 5 years ago was the last decent comedy with kids in it that I can remember.
I started to get uncomfortable when every white guy or female in the movie is lame/stupid/evil and every authority figure (the principle/ the marriage counselor) is black . Next the lead disses ska music, but we get slow motion “wow so cool” shots of her with rap and dance music constantly. And drinking is glamorized throughout the film. The worst part is we were an hour ten minutes through the film and there were still no female breasts yet, but guys were showing off their chest two or three times. Also the lady berates her son as lazy and dislikes every male in the film except for a Latin guy who first appears with a pink backpack on . I was able to watch about one hour and ten minutes of this film before I became nauseous and had to leave. Luckily I got the early bird special and didn’t pay full price for this estrogen manic film. It was too PC. – Steve C.