Bad Moms is cheesy as Hell. Bad Moms is funny as fuck. It’s cheesy as Hell and funny as fuck, and it does both of these seemingly polar opposite things through it’s running length. And that’s actually a problem, but I’m going to ignore that for now.
I thought this film was really funny when it worked (I laughed, in front of strangers in the dark, against my will and everything), and it’s really sweet at times too. Christina Applegate, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn played their assigned roles (Big bad, downtrodden friend and confident friend) perfectly, and, like I’ve said quite a a bit, at times this was funny as fuck. Parts of this film were like straight homages to Wolf of Wall Street, and I loved that. The subject matter is relatable as well, no matter how much some people might claim it’s not. I don’t have kids, I personally might not ever want to have kids, but we all know people who have. Some of us lived with them for a while when we were actually kids (I think legally we were obliged too), so people who’d write it off as a film for parents, or mothers (as I’ve seen written about this film previously) are not very capable of empathy, and probably not very nice people in general. After the film finished, during the closing credits, came possibly my highlight of the film. Interviews(ish) with the actors and their mothers just talking, nothing staged (okay there’s lights and make up and a camera crew, but you know…), just talking about what it’s like to be a mother and it’s so uplifting. I left the cinema happy, I had a smile on my face, it was bloody lovely. All for that. More of that.
There are issues though. The humour works most when the characters are acting bad, are doing what they’re not meant to do, it’s really funny when that happens. They break shit, they break the rules, they break the law… and then they apologise. And then they say how much they love their kids. They go all Hallmark and ‘no but seriously, we’re good moms really’. The big final rousing speech is foreshadowed a couple of times, the main speech itself is pretty much identical to one given by the same character to the same people about ten minutes earlier to the film. The film loses focus and pulls itself in too many directions, which I guess is ironic to say considering that is the current state of the main character Amy Mitchell, played by Mila Kunis (who is always a cool mom, even when her kids says she isn’t, and the film tries to act like she isn’t, she totally is). We don’t really need to see the kids dad, at all. We don’t need to cut away to Amy at work after establishing that the work/parent balance is hard. If the film had more focus this could’ve been one of those films you had on endless repeat. But it’s still enjoyable, and if you overlook the ‘oh don’t we love our kids’ pauses after almost every set piece it’s funny as fuck. Oh and all for female comedies becoming a normal, common thing now. That’s pretty fucking cool. This film is like a 3/5, but it’s a good 3/5, it’s one that with a push would’ve been a 4/5, it would’ve been an Adam Sandler film, back when that was a good thing, and God I love that it almost was.
