Should You See Bad Moms With Your Mom?

2016 | 1 hour 41 minutes | Dir. Jon Lucas & Scott Moore | STX Entertainment

This back- to- school season you can see Bad Moms, a raunchy R- rated comedy about moms.  But should you see Bad Moms with your Actual Mom?

Bad Moms uses bad behavior to tell a good story about motherhood.  Bad Moms has a mom for everybody:

• Workaholic, always busy, too- many- passions mom Amy (Mila Kunis)
• Stay- at- home mom Kiki (Kristen Bell)
• Single biker mom Carla (Catherine Hahn)
• Uppity Martha Stewart mom Gwendolyn (Christina Applegate)
• Uppity Mom’s Henchmoms (Jada Pinkett-Smith and Annie Mumolo).

After Workaholic Mom catches her husband in a relationship with a cam girl, she overhauls her life.  She cuts back hours at work, forces her kids to make their own breakfast and runs against Uppity Mom for PTA president.

The conflicts in Bad Moms seem super real.  The moms deal with Type A kids, too many kids, demanding husbands, and pressure for perfection.  All the archetypes have been distilled down to their basest forms, of course (this is comedy!), but Bad Moms has a heart.  All moms feel under appreciated, all moms try their best, and all moms love their babies.  Even bad moms try to be good moms.  Aw.

The frat party style montages are hilarious.  So is Kristen Bell, known for Veronica Mars and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  She’s one of the most underrated actresses working today.  Her Christian- mom- gone- wild act makes for some of the film’s funniest situational comedy, no penis jokes required.

I saw Bad Moms with my mom.  We are both over 18 (duh).  Only Katherine Hahn’s character made us feel uncomfortable.  Though the film contains limited sexuality (your standard Hot Hookup covered by clothes and/or a sheet), the script has tons of sex jokes.  Most of them deal with infidelity and not all of them sound funny to happily married people and/or moms over 50.  The script also contained a few too many f- words.  Let’s try to *not make “fucking” an acceptable go- to adjective.

As the film progresses, the main conflict becomes Amy’s face- off against Uppity Mom Gwendolyn.  Amy’s heavy divorce gets swept under the rug and the film fails to offer a satisfying conclusion on marital struggles.  The only men in the movie are half- baked and dumb.  Do not see this movie with your dad.

The credits contain heartwarming clips where the lead actresses interview their moms.  This alone makes the film a worthwhile Mom date.  Even though you probably went “ew” at some of the sex jokes or balked when you saw a cam girl’s bush, the sweet way the actresses’ moms talk about their daughters’ mom skills leaves the audience feeling warm and fuzzy.  See Bad Moms with your mom, and stay for the credits.