“Party like a mother,” the tagline promises. Bad Moms mostly delivers on the slogan, though the party is a house party with store-bought donut holes and a PTA bake sale gone wrong. Jon Lucas and Scott Moore wrote and directed the 2016 comedy. It runs 100 minutes and stars Mila Kunis as Amy Mitchell, a 32-year-old sales rep for a coffee company.
Amy lives in the Chicago suburbs with her kids, Jane and Dylan, her husband, Mike, and the family dog, Roscoe. The film premiered in New York City on July 19, 2016, and STX Entertainment released it in theaters on July 29. It grossed over $183 million worldwide, the first STX film to clear $100 million domestically.
It also earned a mixed reception and a Metacritic score of 60 out of 100. That split is the honest read on Bad Moms: a sharp premise, an excellent cast, and a script that keeps reaching for the easy joke.
Trailer, via STXfilms.
Mila Kunis Quits the PTA
Amy does everything. She packs healthful lunches, does her children’s homework for them, drives them to every extracurricular activity, and serves in the school’s PTA, which Gwendolyn James runs with her cronies, Stacy and Vicky. Christina Applegate plays Gwendolyn as a woman who has turned volunteer work into a small empire, and the film is smartest when it treats that empire as a real one. Authority over a bake sale is authority over children, and Gwendolyn uses it.
Then Amy catches Mike cheating on her with a camgirl. She kicks him out and tries to hold the household together. After a particularly stressful day, she publicly quits the PTA over Gwendolyn’s overzealous bake sale. That scene is the hinge of the film, and Kunis plays it as exhaustion rather than triumph. She is not declaring independence. She is dropping something heavy.
Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn Join the Bender
At a nearby bar, Amy meets Carla Dunkler, a laid-back single mom of one son, Jaxon, and Kiki Moore, a stay-at-home mother of four who admires Amy’s dissent. Kathryn Hahn plays Carla with a very hands-off approach to parenting. Kristen Bell plays Kiki as a woman so worn down she has stopped noticing. The three embark on an all-night bender.
The film gets its best comedy from the friction among the three. Amy and Carla are irritated to see that Kiki’s husband is domineering, since he expects her to handle all the kids and the house without help. Amy and Kiki are taken aback by Carla’s approach. Each woman is judging the others, and each judgment lands because the performances are specific. Bell’s Kiki is the quietest and the funniest.
A Widower, a Bake Sale, and a Soccer Bench
Amy wants to start dating again but has no experience. She had a shotgun marriage at 20. She strikes up a conversation with Jessie Harkness, a kind and handsome widowed father who has a crush on her, and the two kiss. Jay Hernandez plays Jessie with an ease the rest of the film could use more of. The romance is thin, but it is not the point.
The plot turns on donut holes. Amy brings store-bought donut holes to the bake sale, which draws Gwendolyn’s ire. Gwendolyn then uses her PTA authority to get Jane benched from the soccer team. That is the moment Bad Moms stops being a comedy about burnout and becomes a comedy about payback. Amy decides to run for PTA president against Gwendolyn.
The Meet-and-Greet That Nobody Attends
Amy holds a meet-and-greet. One visitor shows up. That visitor tells them Gwendolyn has launched a rival party at her own house, catered by Martha Stewart. It is the film’s cleanest joke about PTA politics: the incumbent has better catering, and that is the whole race. The movie understands that the stakes here are petty and that the pettiness is the point.
The cast around the leads is deep. Jada Pinkett Smith plays Stacy, one of Gwendolyn’s allies. Annie Mumolo plays Vicky. Clark Duke plays Dale Kipler. Wendell Pierce plays Principal Daryl Burr. Emjay Anthony and Oona Laurence play Dylan and Jane Mitchell, and David Walton plays Mike Mitchell. Lucas and Moore wrote and directed, and they keep the camera close on faces, which is the right call when the cast is this good.
What Bad Moms Gets Right
The film’s case is simple: motherhood as unpaid logistics, and the women who absorb the cost. Amy’s life is a list of tasks performed for other people. Her quitting the PTA is not a rebellion against parenting. It is a rebellion against the paperwork of parenting. That distinction is real, and the movie earns it in its first act.
The problem is what the movie does with it. Once Amy decides to run for president, Bad Moms becomes a campaign comedy with a bake sale for a battleground, and the sharper observations about Kiki’s marriage and Carla’s parenting get folded into gags. The all-night bender is fun. It is also a detour. The film keeps trading its best material for the next laugh.
Metacritic puts Bad Moms at 60 out of 100. That is a fair number. The premise is better than the execution, the cast is better than the script, and the movie is better in pieces than it is as a whole. Kunis holds the center. Hahn gets the biggest swings. Bell does the most with the least. Applegate is a genuinely good villain, and the film never quite gives her a scene as strong as her entrance.
The Sequel and the Legacy
A sequel, A Bad Moms Christmas, was released on November 1, 2017. That the film got a sequel is not surprising. It cost little, it made over $183 million worldwide, and it handed STX its first $100 million domestic hit. Commercially, Bad Moms did exactly what a mid-budget comedy is supposed to do. It found an audience that felt seen and gave it a night out.
The reviews were mixed, and the mixed reception is the correct one. Bad Moms is not a bad movie. It is a movie with a good idea and an uneven follow-through, which is a more frustrating thing to watch. The first act is sharp. The last act is a race for a punchline. The middle, where the three women actually talk to each other, is the part worth keeping.
Principal photography began in January 2016 in New Orleans and finished in March. The film was made quickly and it shows in the best way: the pacing is brisk, the jokes come fast, and nobody is overthinking the premise. It also shows in the worst way. Some scenes feel like first drafts, and some characters exist only to be a type.
Bad Moms runs 100 minutes. It is a comedy, and a real one, though the funniest passages are the ones that hurt a little. Amy’s exhaustion, Kiki’s invisibility, Carla’s refusal to perform motherhood for an audience — those are the parts that land. The donut holes are funny. The soccer bench is funnier, because it is cruel in a way the film understands.
The verdict here is a qualified recommendation. Bad Moms is worth watching for the cast and for the first half, which is a better movie than the one that follows it. It is not worth watching for the plot, which is a campaign story with a predictable finish. The tagline says to party like a mother. The film’s real subject is what happens when a mother stops. That is the movie Bad Moms almost made.
Key facts
- Release date: July 29, 2016 (theatrical), July 19, 2016 (New York City premiere)
- Distributor: STX Entertainment
- Runtime: 100 minutes
- Genre: Comedy
- Worldwide gross: over $183 million
- Metacritic score: 60 out of 100
- Sequel: A Bad Moms Christmas, released November 1, 2017
The main cast
- Mila Kunis as Amy Mitchell
- Kristen Bell as Kiki
- Kathryn Hahn as Carla Dunkler
- Christina Applegate as Gwendolyn James
- Jada Pinkett Smith as Stacy
- Jay Hernandez as Jessie Harkness
- Annie Mumolo as Vicky
- Wendell Pierce as Principal Daryl Burr
Bad Moms is a 6 of 10. The cast is the reason to watch it, and the script is the reason it never becomes the movie it could have been.
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