What bothers me the most about Bad Moms is that the writers never seem to acknowledge that there no bad moms in their movie. There are at least four moments in the film when this fact could have made its way into the dialogue, but Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have no real interest in what their title means. A simple sentence would have been enough. But it never comes.
That oversight, though, is evident of the larger problem with Bad Moms. Which is that the men behind the movie’s screenplay and direction are more interested in the concept than the execution, more interested in women talking about uncircumcised dicks than giving those women a reason to do so. It’s an idea we have seen before in Bad Santa, or Bad Grandpa, or any of the other films sticking to the formula.
This isn’t terribly surprising. Lucas and Moore wrote and directed Bad Moms. They’ve also written The Hangover, 21 and Over, and The Change-Up. Movies that contain hilarious jokes but are, in the end, uninspired and reductive comedies that put funny actors in funny moments and surround them with nothing much of note.
So it is with Bad Moms. There are scenes in Bad Moms that are riotously funny, and there is one thing those scenes all have in common: they contain all three of the film’s titular Bad Moms. Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn carry the comedy like old pros. Because they are pros, and their on-screen charisma is undeniable. Put them on camera, give them some filthy dialogue, and watch what they can do with it. That’s a winning formula. For a couple scenes, at least.
It’s everything around those scenes that’s a struggle. The opening of Bad Moms was so poor that I actually leaned to my wife and asked her: “Is any of this working for you?” She shook her head, no. It’s not until 25 minutes in, when the three leads are getting drunk in a bar after abandoning the strictures of the PTA that Bad Moms shows any life at all. That’s too long to make us wait. And it’s a sign that Lucas and Moore didn’t really have much of a story to tell. They had the jokes, but not the characters, or the story, or the drive to push us somewhere new. Which makes the film feel, even at a 100 minutes, too long.
This is coming off harsher than I intended. There’s a lot to like in Bad Moms. Watching a comedy with a cast of women this funny really is a delight. And Lucas and Moore get how to take it out on the dads in this film. Watching the timid Kiki (Kristen Bell) come out of her shell and tell off her uber-controling husband is one of film’s best moments. The relief we see in Kristen Bell’s face is real, and warm, and a little afraid. That’s a good moment, but one that the writers take only as far as a dad carrying baby bags! Imagine! Dads carrying stuff! He sure learned his lesson!
Time and again, Bad Moms, turns back to conventionality, sucking the high and low humor out of the room with little interactions that just don’t fit into the world of this women-driven comedy. We are left wondering why these moms are suddenly engaged in a high school student election comedy. Or why, after spending a few days taking care of her own needs, Amy (Mila Kunis), must suddenly be punished for her having some real fun. That kind of scene, of punishing a women for seeking pleasure, doesn’t need to follow in this film.
The obvious comparison for Bad Moms is Bridesmaids, directed by Paul Feig, who has made a career directing comedies about women. Feig has made some of our best comedies in recent years, and most recently he made the off-balance but often hysterical Ghostbusters. The difference between those films and Bad Moms, and the difference is very easy to feel, is that Bad Moms was written by the dudes that wrote The Hangover, and Feig’s films were all written by women.
The point is not that men should not write and direct films for or about women. They should, and they should do it more often. But making a film about Bad Moms should address its subject matter with at least some forthright interest beyond the jokes. The jokes work, gentlemen. But the movie doesn’t.
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