Talented women find fun in ‘Moms’ formula
Comedy transpires in the most obvious places during “A Bad Moms Christmas.”
A randy grandmother goes to a strip club. A small child says the f-word, repeatedly. Even smooth jazz artist Kenny G, perhaps the easiest target on the planet, gets mocked in a cameo.
The rushed sequel to “Bad Moms” (2016) feels more like a financial decision than an artistic mandate. An atrophied plot withers and drops pieces of itself, like your holiday tree in mid-February.
And yet, through all of the pointless detours, shameless product placement and odd timing — Christmas is still 54 days away, shouldn’t this be “A Bad Moms Thanksgiving”? — the comedy does deliver a lot of laughs.
That’s one of the hardest things to admit as a critic: to acknowledge that you’re having a good time, when every obvious sign in front of you suggests the opposite should be happening. “A Bad Moms Christmas” is predictable and ridiculous and lame, but here we are, cracking up at the moms twerking with a department store Santa Claus again.
Credit the collection of strong female actors. Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn are back as moms Amy, Kiki and Carla, more together this time around, but ambushed during the holidays by their own mothers: icy and disapproving Christine Baranski, over-involved Cheryl Hines and absentee biker grandma Susan Sarandon.
Adding famous older actors as crazy in-laws to “Meet the Fockers”-ize your sequel isn’t a
novel concept; it will happen again next week with Mel Gibson and John Lithgow in “Daddy’s Home 2.” But the selection process is key, and Baranski and Sarandon in particular were inspired choices.
Kunis, Bell and Hahn were the best things about the first “Bad Moms,” plowing through otherwise tepid material with a flawed likability that forged bonds with any bad moms in the theater. Their parents, by contrast, come off like horror movie villains.
This was a good script decision. Baranski seems to know the structure is weak, so she commands each moment like a stage production, delivering perfect passive-aggressive strikes toward Kunis as Amy (“I didn’t know Rite-Aid made Christmas decorations”). A running joke about forgetting her daughter’s boyfriend’s existence gets repeated payoffs.
If there’s a casualty in the sequel it’s Bell, who may be the funniest of the young actresses, but has the most limiting character, forced to repeatedly work a single my-mom-is-astalker joke. Whenever Hines and Bell are on screen together as mother and daughter, they seem to be laboring through the same “Saturday Night Live” sketch.
Even more unforgivable is the pointless plot U-turn (literally, they make an illegal Uturn) to watch the brood having fun at Sky Zone trampoline park. Product placement this obvious should result in discounted theater admission.
And then the whole thing ends with a rushed emotional climax that contradicts most of what came before it, followed by all of the cast members dancing in slow motion over the credits. A synchronized dance-off is a distraction Hollywood screenwriters insert when they don’t have a real ending.
And yet, through all the flaws in the second “Bad Moms,” it doesn’t seem completely crazy to spend money on a third one. “A Bad Moms Easter”? “A Bad Moms Spring Break”? “A Bad Moms Arbor Day”?
It really doesn’t matter, as long as they keep the laughs coming.
A synchronized dance-off is a distraction Hollywood screenwriters insert when they don’t have a real ending.