Bad Moms

The shaming of women is a global phenomenon that unfortunately is part of everyday life. Filmmakers, media and marketing industries prey on women's anxieties about their bodies, and motherhood is another favourite target. While the documentary Embrace (2016) calls out body shaming, the comedy Bad Moms (2016) calls out the impossible standards to which modern mothers are expected to conform. Laughter carries this message more effectively than polemic but make no mistake: while this film is funny it also has serious things to say.

The plot line is all too familiar. Over-worked mom Amy (Mila Kunis) is always running between the needs of her spoilt two children, a lazy husband, a part-time job, homework, school rules, and endless extra-curricular activities. The kids are overscheduled, over-controlled and over-indulged, and like too many parents everywhere, the homework is for Amy. When she ditches the husband for having a cyber-sex affair her already chaotic world nears breaking point. That's when the pushy cabal of PTA perfect moms and yummy mummies insist on ever-more elaborate cake-bakes. When she publicly quits the PTA, the snobby dominatrix president Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate) launches a vendetta against Amy and her kids. She retaliates by campaigning for president and the internecine warfare between mom camps escalate in hilarious ways. Deserted by the school, her nearest friends become her emotional anchors and all give themselves permission to party and carry on. While the story is predictable and at times corny, the underlying issues are totally real. The slapstick comedy softens the pointed message about just how powerless mothers are against the onslaught of unrealistic expectations. The bigger irony is that so many movies perpetuate the myth of the perfect mom without even questioning the existence of the perfect dad.

This film is obviously targeted directly at stressed-out moms but dads should watch too. If nothing else, it exposes the gender inequality that persists in parenting and the bigger injustice of 'perfect moms' shaming other moms for not meeting politically correct standards. When Amy gives her election speech and confesses all the ways she is a bad mom she starts a sisterhood chorus of bad moms all needing to offload their guilt about the things they have not done for their children. While it's always possible to find aspects of a film that could have been made better, this film deserves praise for going in to bat for the most honourable profession on the planet.

The surprise hit "Bad Moms" is a comedy starring Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn and is directed by both Scott Moore and Jon Lucas. This movie centers itself around Amy (Mila Kunis) a mother of two who is a bit of a perfectionist. She aspires for her family to have the best that the world can offer. Unfortunately, after a series of bad events everything goes downhill fast. Luckily Amy befriends two other struggling mothers Kiki (Kristen Bell) and Carla (Kathryn Hahn) who work together to try and make some sense of their crazy lives, while having some fun at the same time.

First and foremost, "Bad Moms" works extremely well. I can honestly say that this movie completely shattered my expectations. While the film isn't breaking any new ground or providing any sort of different approach to the extremely over saturated comedy genre, it is fun. That's right, the film from start to finish never fails to entertain. The films humor works on multiple levels. The jokes here never quite seem to stop coming and the entire film feels thoroughly littered with hilarious moments. This is an excellent break from many modern day comedies where all of the jokes come in both the first fifteen and last fifteen minutes. Raunchy humor was obviously a big selling point for this movie, yet thankfully the movie never feels too overbearing with its vulgarity. Never once did I notice a particular character was dropping "F-Bombs" just for the sake of it, but when they did the jokes were hilarious. Writing in this movie is the chemistry between these actresses also felt extremely tight and without it the film just would not have gelled correctly.

All of the actors here are surprisingly funny. Even Kathryn Hahn's (who I have found quite annoying and overly rambunctious in past outings) character here proves to be hilarious and she never misses a beat. Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell also play very entertaining and likable characters. Another surprise was Christian Applegate, Jada Pinkette Smith and Annie Mumolo's performances as the villain moms. While at times they got a tad too outrageous for their own good, these three women were truly amusing and helped further the comedic aspects of the film. Also, a huge shout out to Martha Stewart's hilarious cameo in the film. The only negative that can really be geared toward the acting in this film is the child actors. While I'm sure these kids didn't exactly chose the writing they were given, they come off as spoiled little brats. Throughout the entire movie these kids constantly pestered the overall fun tone that this movie was riding on.

Speaking of tone, this movies strength comes from the lighthearted nature of the plot. The movie is surprisingly heartwarming, yet never overbearing on its themes of family unity. The film knows it's a comedy and it sticks to being a comedy very well, something that can be attributed to the excellent direction and writing in the film. Yet another strong suit in "Bad Moms" has to be its well-rounded pacing. Very seldom in this film does it feel like the plot is glossing over important story points. Impressively it does this while at the same time remaining consistently funny. Moving on to the soundtrack and overall sound design of the film: The soundtrack while not exactly bad, is utterly forgettable. Audiences will struggle to remember a single track and relating scene in the film by the next day.

Going into this movie I completely expected a bland over saturated film about female characters going wild. Instead what I received was a smart film that carries extremely strong female characters without having them seem needy and dependent, something that haunts the film industry today. Luckily this film does all of these things while remaining consistently hilarious and surprisingly sincere. Ultimately "Bad Moms" suffers a few minor hiccups along the way, but comes out a surprisingly hilarious and fun romp.

"Bad Moms" was a movie that I was actually looking forward to getting a chance to sit down and watch because I like Mila Kunis, but also because Kathryn Hahn and Christina Applegate were starring in it.

This is the type of comedy movie that you just know will not challenge your intellect, so it is just basically lean well back in the chair and enjoy the ride. I found "Bad Moms" to actually be better than I had anticipated it to be, so that was a good surprise.

The storyline is quite simplistic really. A group of mothers are fed up with the way that they have to live their lives and perform up to the expectations of every other mother in the PTA group. This liberation leads to a much needed freedom, fun, and comedic self-indulgence.

There is a lot of hilarious moments and situations throughout the course of the movie, and the comedy is served to the audience in terms of both practical and visual comedy, but also by some outrageous and funny dialogue.

While Mila Kunis actually did a great job in this movie, she was just outshone by Kathryn Hahn and her performance here. The movie was so well carried by the female cast, though again I will credit most of the lifting to Kathryn Hahn.

"Bad Moms" is a very funny and entertaining movie, and if you enjoy comedies where there are little limitations. There might be situations that some people will find to be a bit too much, but hey, this is an R-rated movie.

This is also the type of comedy that you can watch again, although I would say that some time should definitely pass in between such multiple viewings. This is hardly a comedy classic, but it still a very enjoyable and entertaining comedy.

In your own head you are not only supermom you are also a martyr that would sacrifice everything for your family.

You are ridiculously hot, you do everything at home and at work (literally) and without you the world would come crumbling down, yet you are under appreciated and treated like dirt.

All in 6 inch heels, flawless make-up and not a hair out of place...

The movie is what Hollywood thinks soccormoms fantasy themselves as. They would break away from their roles and be "bad girls" for a day and that would bring balance back to the force.

I didn't mind the cliché however the humor here is really either hit or miss. You'll either stare in silence at the screen going "what? was that supposed to be a joke? It looked painful/offensive/silly" then there are the jokes that land and those are really funny in comparison... they don't happen often enough to cover for the bad jokes though.

Harmless enough of a movie if there is nothing else on but otherwise I wouldn't recommend it.

Don't expect anything new or mind-blowing - it is simply 90 minutes of pure fun. No sophisticated plot - mother of 2 is having hard time balancing her kids, husband and work, so she decides to quit trying to do everything perfect. She stops helping kids with their homework or making their breakfast, kicks out her sort of cheating husband and decides to run for PTA president with help of two new friends - one divorced cougar and one meek housewife. Rated R - only because of strong language, which is not surprising - you can kill 100 people on screen and still be PG, but if you use C*word - you get R-rated ;) Watch it and have fun, brain-relaxing experience.