‘Bad Moms Christmas’: double themoms, fewer laughs
When the first comedy in this franchise, “Bad Moms,” came out last year, there were just three of those moms — Amy (Mila Kunis), Kiki (Kristen Bell) and Carla ( Kathryn Hahn) — all “wine moms” letting loose with some shots while letting go of their aspirations to be “perfect moms.”
In the new film, the moms of those women — Ruth (Christine Baranski), Sandy (Cheryl Hines) and Isis (Susan Sarandon) — are in town for the holidays, giving us a veritable cornucopia of naughty mommies — and exponentially more emotional manipulation.
The plight of a “wine mom” — who looks for relief from the crushing weight of the heteronormative capitalist patriarchy at the bottom of a chardonnay bottle — addresses a real cultural crisis. And yes, some deft storytellers should shine a light on their predicament.
But co-writers- directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (the masterminds behind the “Hangover” movies) are not those storytellers. One has to wonder if those two have ever met actual human women.
The ones in this film are cartoonish and campy. And like the Seven Dwarfs, they’re categorized by their perceived attributes: Stressy, Crazy, Slutty, Critical, Clingy and Drifter.
Kunis stars as Amy, who’s perpetually harried. Divorced, she has a couple of kids (Oona Lau-
rence and Emjay Anthony), whom she approaches warily, as if not quite sure who they are or why they’re in her house. She also treats her parents (Baranski and Peter Gallagher) like wayward strangers.
The fun with her gal pals is all forced— loud laughing, cheering and slogans like “Let’s take back Christmas!”
“Bad Moms” seems to spring from a single inspirational scene — moms going crazy at a house party. The rest of the movie is spun out of that.
When their “twerking” on Santa sequence ends, within the first 10minutes, the film starts to drift — with lots of tedious male-stripper filler thrown in. Think of it as a “Bad Moms” meet “Magic Mike” holiday extravaganza, except with truly ghastly dancing.
The adhesive meant to hold things together includes emphatic line deliveries, intended to make us think lines that are not jokes are actually funny; and endless slow-motion montages of mayhem set to pop tunes.
Baranski is wonderful playing Ruth, a 1 percenter with a monstrous Type A personality, and she does get a few amazing lines (“Those ornaments are from the Titanic! That ice is from the moon!”).
Hines is delightfully surreal playing the overprotective Sandy.
Hahn is impressive, but you may find yourself wanting to scream, “This is beneath you!” about nearly every scene she’s in.
One thing that’s offensive about “A Bad Moms Christmas” is how shoddily it’s made. Female audiences deserve better than this.
On top of that, it presents the enemies of moms as other moms— rather than a rigidly gendered social structure and expectations that emotional and domestic labor should be left entirely to women.
Here’s hoping that “A Bad Moms Revolution” will be the next, and final, installment in the franchise.