‘Bad Moms’ Isn’t Your Mother’s Summer Comedy

Bust out the boxed wine and your audiobook of 50 Shades of Grey, Bad Moms has arrived.

Supermom Amy Mitchell (Mila Kunis) lives a near-perfect suburban life, complete with two kids, a minivan and an adorable pup. But after kicking her doofus of a husband out for cheating on her, she finds herself on a downward spiral that leads straight to Bad Mommery.

Stumbling into a bar later that evening, she befriends the exhausted stay-at-home mother-of-four Kiki (Kristen Bell) and the raunchy and unruly single mom, Carla (Kathryn Hahn), and vows to give up on trying to be the perfect matriarch.

Adopting a no-f*cks-given attitude, Amy swaps her minivan for a muscle car and starts living on the wild side of motherhood, which includes matinee movies, fast food and absolutely no middle school bake sales. Soon enough, her newfound freedom is met with the wrath of the PTA mean girls, helmed by the Stepford Wives-esque Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate). With the help of her new friends, Amy must take down the tyrannical Gwendolyn and her squad of perfect moms who are making her life—and the lives of her children—absolutely miserable.

The film has fun mocking new-age parenting and start-up culture (Amy’s nitwit boss is especially easy to hate), but at times the humour feels slightly too male-oriented (dick jokes, we get it). It’s probably because the two bros behind The Hangover trilogy, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, wrote and directed this comedy. And for that reason, despite the film’s attempts, Bad Moms fails to follow in the footsteps of female-fronted comedy flicks like Ghostbusters and Bridesmaids. 

But between the raging house party scenes of mothers drunk on cheap wine and Kunis’ unconvincing portrayal of a dorky mom (face it, even with that nursing bra she’ll never not be hot), Bad Moms does address the very real and unfair expectations modern mothers face. Amy captures the struggle best, proclaiming, “We’re killing ourselves trying to be perfect and it’s making us insane.” Bad moms are just good moms trying and failing at being perfect. Which is every mom, duh.

Bad Moms revs into theatres today. Check out the trailer below.