Bad Moms review: Beware of mothers breaking bad into gooey marshmallows

It’s like Mean Girls except if Mean Girls grew up and had some selfish, spoilt kids and were not fun anymore at all.

Bad Moms
Director: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Cast: Mila Kunis, Christina Applegate, Kristen Bell, Jada Pinkett Smith, Kathryn Hahn
Rating: 2/5

The star-studded cast of Kunis, Bell, Applegate, Smith and Hahn fail miserably at recreating the outrageous fun and chaos of The Hangover.(STX Entertainment)

This week is all about woman power when it comes to Hollywood releases. On the one hand we have the Ghostbusters reboot with an all-female cast and on the other, a possible attempt at making The Hangover with ... an all-female cast.

While the Ghostbusters fanboys have already made up their mind to hate the former till their last breath, Bad Moms at least has a chance to be judged only after being watched. So here it goes: It’s lazy, unfunny and a total disappointment.

Read: Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn are all Bad Moms

The star-studded cast of Kunis, Bell, Applegate, Smith and Hahn fail miserably at recreating the outrageous fun and chaos of The Hangover. While the original 2009 booze fest had the thinnest of plots that grew into a series of hilarious comedic adventures, Bad Moms is more like one of those high-school comedies that Hollywood minted on the assembly line in the early 2000s.

Why did Jada Pinkett Smith even agree to be minion to a bully? (STX Entertainment)

There is a nice girl (Kunis, mother of two selfish, spoilt kids) who gets bullied by another popular girl at school (Applegate and the school is their kids’). The nice girl has two friends, a dumb one (Bell) and an ‘outgoing’ one (Hahn) but they are both great at heart and always have her back. The popular one also has two minions: A religious follower (Smith) and a dumb one (Annie Mumulo). The movie resembles Mean Girls more and more with every passing minute.

So the nice girl/mom is fed up of being the perfect mother, juggling work, her two kids, bake sales and the hell-ish PTA meetings and decides to quit. And you won’t believe what she does: Stops cooking for her kids! Can you imagine the nerves on her?

Read: Bad Moms - Superwoman Lilly Singh shoots with Mila Kunis

Dropping the sarcasm, this is indeed the makers’ definition of mothers breaking bad: Not cook, drink in a controlled environment with her female friends, not do her son’s homework for him and date a nice, gentlemanly widower which is totally legit because she isn’t cheating on anyone either.

Some of the attempts to make the movie look awesome are so evidently desperate, it hurts to watch them. There’s a scene where the ladies, drunk, go grocery shopping to Icona Pop playing in the background. The excessive use of slow motion and propeller fans to blow wind into their hair for such a stupid scene causes huge second-hand embarrassment.

What’s so rad about mixing coke and vodka in milk and drinking it in a grocery store that it required a slo-mo treatment? (STX Entertainment)

But giving credit where it’s due, the movie’s heart in the right place. It advocates moms’ right to cut themselves some slack. We, sitting in a third world country, cannot really comprehend the heavy judgment middle and upper class mothers in the US have to face like not punishing kids, not saying no to kids, feeding kids organic food, not hiring a nanny, not leave your job and still manage to look like a supermodel at the end of the day. Bad Moms tries to give these moms a voice. Only if it was enjoyable to watch as well.

Kunis is back after the unforgivable Jupiter Ascending and her performance as the way-too-good-looking mother is ordinary. The onus of making the movie funny did not rest on her but on Katheryn Hahn entirely and that woman is an underrated gem. After Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wigg, I trust her to take the baton of female comedy in Hollywood forward.

Katherine Hahn is the highlight of the movie and worthy of a few chuckles. (STX Entertainment)

I wish I could throw Bad Moms in the faces of the misogynistic haters found regularly in the YouTube comments section of Ghostbusters trailer and laugh at their expressions of defeat but it’s me sitting sunken in my seat with the same expression. Hopefully, Ghostbusters will clear the name of female comedy movies and not let the legacy left behind by Bridesmaids go to dirt.

Read: Ghostbusters review: The worst movie of all time is actually pretty good

Watch trailer here:

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