2016's Bad Moms was an entertaining surprise that
shouldn't have been a surprise at all.
How could anyone question three funny, underrated women with great
chemistry and excellent comic timing carrying a relatable low stakes comedy
with a smart balance of heart and R-rated raunch? It's no wonder the film was a huge success;
it's even less surprising that a sequel (and a yet-to-be-seen spinoff, Bad
Dads) was announced just as it was wrapping up its impressive run.
Barely 15 months later, Mila Kunis, Kristen
Bell and Kathryn Hahn come home for the holidays with A Bad Moms Christmas, a
sweet but all-too-familiar holiday confection that should have spent a little
more time in the oven.
The story revolves around the Bad Moms getting holiday
visits from their own mothers. Amy
(Kunis) finds herself at odds with her haughty perfectionist mother (Christine
Baranski), Kiki (Bell) is smothered by her boundary-free "best
friend" mom (Cheryl Hines), and Carla (Hahn) questions her relationship
with her free-spirited, distant mother (Susan Sarandon). The three veteran actresses are terrific,
perfectly cast, playing exactly the types of mothers one would expect these
women to have. The level of talent in
the film, down to the smallest parts, is impressive on paper. The issue is that the material is not up to
the level of any of them.
The chemistry of the three leads certainly carried the first
Bad Moms, but they had much better material to work with. Writer-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore
cracked a code that comedy filmmakers had been striving for since the original Hangover,
utilizing the talent on hand and delivering a fun experience. A Bad Moms Christmas makes the
original look like lightning in a bottle.
The raunchy rebellious spirit of the first film is basically reduced to
slow motion montages of the three leads getting drunk and wreaking havoc set to
a predictably uncharacteristic rap song.
Remove these, the generous F-bombs and This is Us's Justin
Hartley's entire character, and what's left is a cookie cutter Hallmark film
about insecure women raised by insecure women, with a sprinkling of wacky
family jokes lifted verbatim from funnier movies. Rehashing what always works is a
tried-and-true technique in holiday movies, repeating jokes from Christmas
Vacation with more F-bombs does not a holiday comedy classic make.
 |
| Things are about to get nasty! |
Score
-Mike Stec