Bad Moms is your typical formulaic Hollywood comedy, and yet, it works anyway, largely on the strength of its performers, like the hilarious Kathryn Hahn.
Being a mom is hard in this day and age. You have to deal with whiny kids, Parent Teacher Association nonsense, and, if you’re that unfortunate, a completely useless husband. What’s even harder is making an actually funny comedy out of that.
Bad Moms was created by the same writers behind The Hangover. It’s the story of a young mother with a disengaged husband and a terrible job who just wants to do right by her kids. It is, on the best of days, an uphill battle, made ten times worse by other mothers who judge her efforts as inferior. And Amy Mitchell has had enough. Alongside her new friends Kiki and Carla, she decides to be a bad mom.
To be clear, she doesn’t mean that she’s going to be neglectful or abusive. Just that she’s going to stop trying to be perfect in the eyes of other people with unattainable standards.
The plot of this movie is about as formulaic as you can imagine. They establish Amy’s life, for better and for worse. She snaps, makes new friends among the disenfranchised, and starts a campaign to dethrone the queen of the judgmental moms. Naturally, she succeeds, gets the great guy, and everybody learns a valuable lesson and becomes friends. Including the perfect moms.
Form-u-laic.
But it works and that is due to the performances of some very funny actresses. Mila Kunis plays Amy well. Haggard and beaten down yet still hopeful, she’s the inspiration for the bad mom revolution.
Alongside Kunis stand Kristen Bell as Kiki and Kathryn Hahn as Carla. As always, Kathryn Hahn is spectacularly funny. She is absurdly over the top as the single mother who loves aspects of the lifestyle, parties a little hard, and has a heart of gold underneath. Amy and Kiki are the first friends she lets in. But Kristen Bell holds her own. Kiki is the quintessential stay at home mom stereotype whose life has revolved solely around her kids for years and rarely gets out of the house alone. She is funny, socially inept, and earnest.
The opposing side is played by Annie Mumolo, Jada Pinkett Smith, and, as their leader, Christine Applegate. They are the perfect moms, the ones who have it all together in the face of overwhelming odds. Or at least seem to. Applegate plays the malevolent and controlling Gwendolyn to absurd perfection.
This movie succeeds in balancing out all six key moms, giving them all chances to be endearing and funny. That is a huge achievement in comedies like this. Kathryn Hahn definitely stands out but I have to admit that I am a little biased when it comes to her performance. I think Kathryn Hahn is one of the funniest actors out there today. She kept me in stitches in Bad Moms as well.
Beyond that, Bad Moms captures the pressures of modern motherhood well. You get the kids up, get them to school, head to work, go home, deal with extracurricular activities, get them to bed, and go around again. There are more than a few fathers who help out at home or are going through similar lifestyles on their own but society doesn’t put the same expectations on them. Mothers are expected to keep it all together and look good doing it. And they rarely get the appreciation they deserve. The realities of that are palpable throughout the film. Amy’s responses to this pressure aren’t necessarily the best but that’s part of the character. She makes choices and deals with the ramifications of them.
It’s also fantastic to watch a female driven comedy that’s funny and engaging. The jokes in this film are poignant when they need to be and raunchy when they have to be. There are moments that will make you absolutely uncomfortable but that’s where the best humor comes from. It’s not offensive or derogatory but does push the laughs to come from a place you might not be expecting.
In the midst of the traditional summer barrage of blockbusters, sequels, adaptations, and reboots, it will be hard for a small budget comedy like this to make a splash. But it has done reasonably well, recouping its budget on the opening weekend and it’s already in the black. If word of mouth get a hold of this one, and hopefully it will, there might be more money at the box office for it.
Bad Moms might not have the most original story structure or plot but it more than makes up for it with great performances from some very funny women.
I wonder what Bad Moms 2 will look like.