BAD MOMS (2016)

This comedy drama co-directed and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore is essentially a very good movie with some real reservations I had about its execution. The story of a near perfect wife and mother who comes to see her life start to unravel one day and realize that all of her efforts for perfection are not resulting in any sort of meaningful life for her or her children. With a husband who has been cheating on her with an internet escort and being taken advantage of at work by some idiot millennial who runs the company, she starts to fight back. Joining her are two other housewives with children at the same school who are downtrodden themselves but in rather different ways. I questioned some of the script’s logic in having these woman practically destroy a local supermarket while making fools of themselves as being a bit unnecessary, and the over use of expletives, particularly the “f word” is a cheap shot by screenwriters who don’t have the sense to search the dictionary for alternative adjectives. However this movie has a lot of heart and that’s where it succeeds, with a basically really good script and excellent acting from Mila Kunis, who frankly is so perfectly wonderful and beautiful, you wonder how her husband is not fully devoted to her. She is supported by Kristen Bell as a put upon mother of four small children and an insensitive husband and Kathryn Hahn who pretty much steals the show with her performance as a single mother who is desperate to land a man, any man. Annie Mumolo, an excellent Jay Hernandez, as the Knight in Shining Armor, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Christina Applegate round out the adult cast with fine performances from the child actors which included Oona Laurence and Emjay Anthony.