‘BAD’ BEHAVIOR
Stressed-out moms go wild in raunchy comedy
From sophomore directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who also co-wrote the screenplay, comes “Bad Moms.” After “Bad Grandpa,” what could go wrong?
Mila Kunis, whose gift for comedy was apparent in “That ’70s Show,” stars as multi-hyphenate mother Amy Mitchell. Amy is a neglected wife, stressed-out mother and exploited part-time employee of a thriving “super hip” coffee business, where her boss Dale (Clark Duke) is a thoughtless jerk and notably younger than she. Amy is also her children’s chauffeur.
Amy and her husband, Mike (Boston-born David Walton), had their first child when she was 20. Now, she and Mike have two kids. Twelve-yearold Jane (the talented Oona Laurence) is desperate to get into an Ivy League school. “They’re turning down Asians,” she shouts at her mom to explain her need to get on the school soccer team. Amy’s older son Dylan (Emjay Anthony) is content to have his mother do everything for him, including his homework, because he claims he’s a “slow learner.”
The school is more or less run by the
dictatorial head of the PTA Gwendolyn James (Christina Applegate), together with her mean wing-women Stacy (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Vicky (Annie Mumolo). When Amy catches mortgage broker Mike with his pants down in front of the computer, where he is “chatting” with a naked woman, Amy turns her life upside down and goes on a binge.
She quits the PTA and enjoys a drunken evening with her new friends, wild single mom Carla (comedy whiz Kathryn Hahn) and oppressed mother of four Kiki (an appealing Kristen Bell).
Kunis, Hahn and Bell make a terrific comic trio, even if the material — the usual “Hangover”-style raunchy jokes and displays, booze-fueled montages, generic, ear-splitting pop music and hip-hop — is uneven. In a climactic scene, Amy drops totally unnecessary F-bombs in a big speech, and you just cringe for her. Lucas and Moore wrote the three “Hangover” films, and thus you know what to expect here.
In one funny scene, Carla claims not to have known the rule not to have sex with the school janitor. She also has a catchphrase that is an amusing variation on the song title “It's Raining Men.”
I laughed out loud when Carla used Kiki's hooded head to demonstrate how to handle a certain kind of sexual organ. When Amy enrages Gwendolyn and runs against her for PTA president, and the latter assures Amy, “Winter is coming,” the plot gets way too contrived. The usual insincere sentimentality and hugging ensue in the finale.
The cast, including Wanda Sykes as a couples' therapist who gives up on Amy and Mike, is very good, and Jay Hernandez is charismatic as the male object of Amy's desire.
But “Bad Moms” often feels like a bad “Hangover” film with a female cast.
(“Bad Moms” contains alcohol abuse, profanity, lewd language and sexually suggestive scenes.)