Moms' Night Out

I really don't want to be too hard on Moms' Night Out.  It's been made with the best of intentions, and the movie never outright offends.  Heck, I almost want to applaud the film's directors, the Erwin Brothers, for trying something different.  We've had a lot of Christian-centered dramas lately, but this one wants to be a madcap comedy that delivers its faith-based message in a less heavy-handed way.  Unfortunately, an overall lack of energy works against whatever good will it creates.

The template for the film's premise is obviously the 80s cult classic, Adventures in Babysitting.  Or, if you want a more recent example, look at Date Night with Steve Carell and Tina Fey.  Just like those films, this one centers on a small group of characters who are out on the town, and everything that could go wrong ultimately does.  Those movies worked because of their escalating situations they put their characters through.  This is exactly where Moms' Night Out falls flat.  The adventures that the three moms at the center of the film have are just not crazy or exciting enough.  They go to fancy restaurants, shady tattoo parlors, and even end up spending the night at a police station, but nothing really happens to them at these places.  It also doesn't help that none of the three main moms (and a fourth young mom who joins up with them along the way) are all that interesting to start with.

Our lead mom is Allyson (Sarah Drew from TV's Grey's Anatomy), an overworked mom with three unruly kids, and a husband (Sean Astin) who genuinely loves her, but seldom is there to help out, since he travels a lot for his job.  Allyson writes a "mommy blog", where she gets to vent about her frustrations and thoughts on motherhood.  This allows her to write such nuggets of wisdom like, "If at first you don't succeed, have a piece of cake, and then try again".  Regardless, Allyson still feels like she is trapped in her life.  She desperately needs a night out, and arranges that she, her best friend Izzy (Andrea Logan White), and the wife of the local pastor, Sondra (Patricia Heaton), hit the town, while their respective husbands watch over the kids for the night.

The night kicks off with the three friends arriving at a trendy restaurant, where they think they have a reservation, only to be turned away by the snooty woman working at the check in desk.   Next, they head to a nearby bowling alley, where the moms get wrapped up in the cause of a young mother who works there named Bridget (Abbie Cobb).  It seems that Bridget has left her baby in the care of a friend, only to have that friend leave the tyke behind with a biker named Bones (country singer Trace Adkins) who works at a tattoo parlor.  They track down Bones, but he doesn't have the baby either.  The remainder of the night turns into a mad dash to find the missing baby.  As for the husbands, their adventures with the kids involve a Chuck E. Cheese-style restaurant, a trip to the hospital, and an unruly pet bird that's escaped from its cage.

Moms' Night Out should be energetic and frantic, but its far too mellow for that.  It's like the movie is constantly afraid to truly cut loose.  There are some potentially funny situations, but they either don't quite come together, or they seem muted.  If you're going to make a movie like this, where things get increasingly manic, you can't really hold yourself back.  And that's just what the screenplay constantly does.  This movie's idea of a gag is to have the pastor's wife get caught holding a bunch of beer bottles that she was clearing away, so that someone sees her holding them, and automatically assumes there's some kind of scandal.  The moms (who are supposed to be close friends) never quite form a tight on-screen relationship.  As for the husbands, they're the sitcom types who suddenly become incompetent around children the very second the women aren't around.

The one character in the film who does stand out, and works as the film intends, is the character of Bones, who gets more involved with the situation of the missing baby as the night goes on.  Trace Adkins' performance finds the right approach of low key humor, as well as genuine emotion.  When he gets to deliver the film's moral and faith-based message to Allyson in a late scene, he sells it without being preachy or hitting the audience over the head.  Bones is the one character who grabbed my attention, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that he is not written as a cliche, and actually possesses a personality.  This proves that the writers do know how to make a likable character, they just chose not to with their main ones, for whatever reason.

Moms' Night Out is worth the occasional chuckle, but it's not very memorable, and never quite builds to what it could have been.  Maybe the family-friendly tone kind of holds the movie back.  This should have been a lot crazier and much more raucous.  But at the same time, just because the movie wants to be for families and teach a moral lesson at the end, that doesn't mean it has to be so bland.

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