Bad Moms (2016)

Bad Moms is a comedy about parenting, and specifically motherhood. While I am neither a parent nor a mother, I feel able to critique this movie.

Amy (Mila Kunis) is the mother of two kids, and she’s trying to do it all. The movie starts off on a really bad day where everything goes wrong, all before she gets to work. As she drops the kids off at school, she’s ordered by the PTA president Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate) to attend a ‘mandatory’ meeting that night, to discuss the upcoming bake sale. The day progresses from bad to worse after she brings her dog to the vet, has an encounter with her boss who expects magic from her, argues with her husband, etc, etc, and culminates when she finally says enough.

She storms off to a bar, and runs into two other moms from the school, Karla (Kathryn Hahn), and Kiki (Kristen Bell). Karla is a very outgoing single mom on the prowl, and Kiki is a stay-at-home mom, who’s a bit off. They bond over some similarities, and realize they’re not alone. The will make it through, together.

This is a crass movie, but not too crude. A lot of truths about parenting and motherhood are revealed, in funny ways. The good news is that the trailers you’ve seen don’t cover all the good material, because there is a lot more they couldn’t show. This is a mother-centered film, and there are a handful of men, but the focus is clearly on the moms and the frustrations of motherhood.

There is more than enough humor in the movie for me to recommend it, though I can’t fully relate to much of it. There are a few things I had a slight problem with, and the ending drags a little, but none of those things come close to being showstoppers.

There is a pre-credit sequence that is heartwarming and smirk-worthy, so you should stay through that portion.

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