review: BAD MOMS

Not 'Bad Moms' But 'Bad Script'

1.5 stars

Mini Review:

If you are not the perfect mom, then you must be bad. And not just bad, you have to be vodka swilling, lecherous woman whose home should be in a perpetual mess. It’s a great idea gone so wrong, the combined talents of Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn and Christina Applegate cannot save the film.

Main Review:

Mila Kunis the quintessential harried mom. Ferrying her kids from activity to activity, doing all their homework and school projects, handling a sales job and a slob of a husband, keeping house and cooking fabulous, healthy meals. All this in high heels.

Take a moment to look at your own life. Woah! You know so many women (and men) like Mila Kunis but it’s just that they don’t look so good doing it.

One awful day and her beautiful home falls apart. She realises that things need to change. And that she needs to learn to say, ‘No’ to her kids and family and her job and only then will she get some respite.

Such a great idea it is, until we realise that the only way out of this perfect world is to create a cliche ridden escape. Mila Kunis and two other harried moms (Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn) go drinking and shopping and eating and drinking and leching at school dads and drinking and then drinking some more in order to find dutch courage to date.

Meanwhile the kids behave even more obnoxiously, and something inside you snaps. You wish the mom would just react like the mom in the Indian play ‘Ma Retire Hoti Hai’ (it has been staged in many Indian languages and each has been succcessful).

Christina Applegate plays the villainous ambitious PTA head mom very well and is a great foil to the trio of bad moms. A surprise appearance of Martha Stewart is a good thing!

The movie earns a star because it tackles a very real subject in an almost hilarious, almost serious way. The only problem is that it is so predictable you could barf.

(this review appears on nowrunning dot com)