Bad Moms

An almost shockingly bottom-of-the-barrel comedy, Bad Moms follows Mila Kunis’ Amy as she snaps one day and essentially begins shirking all of her responsibilities – with the movie detailing the fallout of that decision as well as Amy’s newfound friendship with Kristen Bell’s uptight Kiki and Kathryn Hahn’s rebellious Carla. It’s clear immediately that filmmakers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore aren’t looking to attempt anything resembling subtlety here, as Bad Moms is overflowing with laughable attempts at sentimentality and eye-rollingly broad instances of comedy – with, in terms of the latter, Lucas and Moore’s screenplay placing a consistent emphasis on elements that couldn’t possibly be less misguided. (The most egregious example of this is surely Christina Applegate’s grating, aggressively over-the-top turn as a smug rival to the movie’s heroes.) The paint-by-numbers narrative is compounded by a tendency to stress caricatures over characters, and it is, perhaps not surprisingly, impossible to muster up even an ounce of interest in the one-dimensional protagonists’ endeavors. It doesn’t help, either, that Lucas and Scott spend much of Bad Moms‘ interminable running time pandering to the lowest common denominator, as the movie has been suffused with misguided moments designed to “empower” viewers but that are instead pathetic and sanctimonious. By the time the absurdly schmaltzy final stretch rolls around, in which the viewer is actually asked to sympathize for a larger-than-life villainous figure, Bad Moms has confirmed its place as an oppressive and pervasively unfunny trainwreck that squanders the talents of an agreeable, talented cast.

1/2* out of ****