Bad Moms

The trailers for Bad Moms did little to impress me.  It looked like a fairly standard entry into the raunchy comedy genre that Hollywood loves so much lately, where everyday people snap and just decide to indulge in their greatest sinful vices.  Watching the film, however, I discovered that writers and directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (they wrote The Hangover) have a lot more on their minds.  The movie has a lot of real truths into the current struggles of being a mom.  This is a surprisingly smart and insightful film, as well as being probably the funniest movie I've seen so far this year.

Amy Mitchell (Mila Kunis), like a lot of moms, is overworked as she tries to keep her entire family together.  She got married and had her first kid when she was 20, so she's been at this pretty much her entire adult life.  She lives in a suburb in Chicago with her lazy husband (David Walton), whom she describes as her "third child", and their two tween kids - an overachieving and stressed out daughter (Oona Laurence, who stood out so well last year in Southpaw, and does good work here) and a slacker son (Emjay Anthony) who refuses to live up to his full potential.  Amy is constantly juggling her duties of running a home, keeping up with her kids' sporting events and club activities, and working part time at a coffee company for a jerk of a boss who is much younger than her (Clark Duke), never mind the fact that she is only 32 herself.  Her stress and responsibilities become much greater when she catches her husband having an on line affair, and must now run everything as a single parent.

When she drops the kids at school, Amy frequently has to deal with the "Queen Bee" of the school moms, Gwendolyn (a perfectly icy and hilarious Christina Applegate), who behind her perfect housewife facade lurks the heart of a cruel taskmaster who runs the PTA and the school bake sale like a boot camp.  Given all the pressures that Amy must face regarding all of this, she finally snaps and becomes a "bad mom", devoting her time to herself and what she wants to do.  She is jointed in this total detachment from her duties by two new friends - meek housewife Kiki (Kristen Bell) and drunken and foulmouthed single mom Carla (Kathryn Hahn).  Together, they will not only try to live life together, but also take down the deceptively sunny Gwendolyn, as well as take a stand for overworked moms everywhere.

So much attention was brought to the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters just two weeks ago, which ended up being a total disappointment.  Bad Moms is the female talent-driven comedy that deserves the true accolades.  Not only is it frequently hilarious, but it knows how to use its talented cast to the best of their abilities.  Mila Kunis hasn't been this good in a comedy since 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall (which coincidentally also featured Kristen Bell as her co-star), and she's actually much better here.  She shows such great timing, and creates Amy into such a sympathetic and relatable character that you wonder why it has taken so long for someone to use her this well.  Kristen Bell does get some big laughs as a housewife who is constantly under the thumb of her domineering husband, especially when she describes their sex life.  But the true stand out here is Kathryn Hahn, who is giving a breakthrough comic performance here.  She's one of those actresses who's been working in the industry for almost 20 years and has been in a lot of films, but seldom has been given the chance to truly be memorable.  This could change that.

Talented as the cast is, the movie would be nothing if the script wasn't funny, and it certainly is.  I haven't laughed this often at a comedy in a while.  But the movie is also insightful.  It balances the bad behavior with a lot of truths.  Behind all the raunchy jokes and bad behavior, the movie does have something to say about what a lot of moms have to deal with everyday in the current academic environment.  Not only that, it knows how to balance some genuinely sweet and somewhat dramatic moments in a way that doesn't feel like the movie is suffering from tonal shifts, or without going into all-out sentimental mode.  One of my recurring criticisms with a lot of recent adult-oriented comedies is how they turn soft and gooey toward the end.  I guess you could say Bad Moms does turn soft toward the end, but it does so in a way that it doesn't feel like a total betrayal of what came before.  These are still the same characters we have come to know, and they get to retain their sense of humor.

This is also not a nasty or mean-spirited movie.  It can often be crude, but it is not gross, nor is it offensive.  It doesn't force its talented cast to lower themselves, or play out scenes that require long, sad talks with their agents afterward.  Most of the humor comes from the dialogue, which is frequently smart and very sharp.  And while obviously not every joke hits big, the energy and enthusiasm of the cast more than makes up for it.  Just about every lead performance here would be one that would steal the show in a different comedy.  But when you put all of them together, you get a movie that nearly constantly fires on all cylinders, and seldom gets bogged down with stuff that doesn't work.  This movie hardly misses a beat during its entire running time.

Bad Moms for me is the biggest surprise of the summer movie season.  It's the kind of movie that makes you laugh early on, and then you're delighted to discover that the laughs continue to build as it goes on.  These days, it's rare for a comedy to make me laugh consistently.  When one comes along, it's something you want to celebrate.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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