Mike McCahill 

Bad Moms review – more rowdy coffee morning than riot grrrl

Mila Kunis leads a revolt against the PTA in a soft-focus mommiverse reminiscent of the average Hallmark movie
  
  

Occasional snickers … from left, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn.
Occasional snickers … from left, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn. Photograph: Michele K Short/AP


The assumption here may be that Hangover scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have lazily passed their signature middling-to-low jinks through screenwriting software that switches gendered pronouns. Actually, Bad Moms risks occasioning a different kind of insult, timidly redacting the raucousness lest it scare anybody off.

Mila Kunis’s PTA refuseniks thus gain self-knowledge within a soft-focus mommiverse reminiscent of the average Hallmark movie: a hoodie-clad Kristen Bell’s penis impersonation is as off-the-leash as it gets. (Network TV’s Mom is filthier.) Reduced expectations will help – the leads wring odd snickers from second-rate material – but with its bland blasts of chart pop, it’s less riot-grrrl provocation than sporadically rowdy coffee morning.

 

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