Bad Moms (2016)
Starring Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Oona Laurence, Emjay Anthony, Annie Mumolo, Jay Hernandez, David Walton, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Christina Applegate
Directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore
I'm not a fan of
Hangover-styled comedies where adults act raucous just because they usually can't in their normal lives so admittedly
Bad Moms had an uphill battle to work for me, but with its essentially non-existent story, directors and co-writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have crafted one of the worst films of 2016. Color me unsurprised upon looking at imdb.com that Lucas and Moore were the genius writers behind
The Hangover and its sequels -- certainly shows that their quality of penmanship hasn't improved all that much in the past decade as they still mine for comedy in alcohol, drugs, and raunch but in the basest way possible.
The failure of
Bad Moms has absolutely nothing to do with the women at its center -- a trio of moms who find their homelives in various states of disarray as their status as "Mom" has taken over all other aspects of their identity. Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathyrn Hahn are the reasons I stuck with this one for its entirety -- well, that and the fact that I watched it on a long car ride home from vacation and had nothing better to do. Together, the trio are engaging and really do attempt to make the most out of a bad situation.
That bad situation, however, is simply unsaveable. Sure, there are moments of levity -- many of them coming from Hahn's carefree, sex-crazed character -- but this film has almost no story to latch onto and its characters are so underdeveloped that it makes its 100-minute runtime feel interminable. Were it not for the aforementioned cast -- which also includes Christina Applegate in a thankless and underdeveloped villainess role and Oona Laurence and Emjay Anthony as Kunis' kids -- there would've been no way I could've made it until the end. Acting crazy doesn't always equal laughs as writers Lucas and Moore have more than proven looking at their resumés. The public has spoken for some reason, though, and their style of pedestrian screenplay seemingly does the trick -- not for this reviewer, however.
The RyMickey Rating: D-
Unlike some, hearing that Frozen was going to be an all-out old-school animated Disney musical was a huge plus for me. I grew up in the days of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin -- movies that relied on their songs to both advance the story and add depth to their characters. Of course, that was the era of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman whose respective music and lyrics felt necessary to the plot rather than seeming superfluous to it. With Ashman's passing in the early 90s, Menken still carried on the tradition and did so rather successfully. As of late, however, Disney has veered away from the movie musical in large part likely due to the success of Pixar's films which were never music-based. With 2011's Tangled, Disney rehired Alan Menken and were treated to their most successful animated movie in well over a decade, but the film wasn't as musically "full" as prior flicks, containing only four full-length numbers. Although the trailers for Frozen weren't entirely appealing, the Disney fan that I am still had high hopes because of the apparent return to their 90s-era all-out musical. Unfortunately, with some new lyricists and composers at the helm, Frozen just had me longing for the glory days of the Menken/Ashman 90's with the music proving to be a hindrance rather than a help to the overwhelmingly enjoyable plot and characters.
