Bad Moms not so bad, just underdone
Bad Moms (R16) 100 mins
Bad Moms wants to be the so-bad-they’re-cool kid at the back of the class, but they’re actually the cheeky pupil who will still swot hard for end-of-year exams.
But that works for its real target audience – middle-aged, middleclass midwest Trump voters – who would like a mildly diverting 100 minutes of comedy.
Mila Kunis plays mum-of-two Amy Mitchell, driven to despair by a man-child husband and a militant parent-teacher association, who in cahoots with her two best mates (Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn) declares it’s time to become the ‘‘bad mom’’ of the title.
This is typified, it seems, by going to the pub during the day and a ridiculous slow-motion supermarket rampage and a raging party where everyone drives home at 11pm.
Kunis seems mis-cast in the title role, too tightly wound and precise to be convincing as a mum at the end of her tether.
There are, it’s true, plenty of laughs, but these mostly come from the supporting cast – Bell, Christina Applegate and the superb Hahn, whose drunken, lascivious single mother is the only truly subversive element of a film which pretends to deliver that throughout. At times, Bad Moms threatens to break out into something really challenging – but the happilyever-after ending shies away from making it memorable.