BEFORE: OK, I could not finish this film last night, because I came home and had some beer and chocolate cake, then crashed - I really needed the sleep, but I was up by 9 am on a Saturday morning. Still, it's a big day, I have to pack and kind of help get the house in order because we're going to be gone for a week. My mother has been in and out of the hospital because the fluid is building up in her body again, her heart just isn't strong enough to keep things flowing, so they're either talking about surgery to fix her aortic valve (which has been considered before, but nixed because they don't think she'd survive the surgery) or putting her in hospice care, which is basically just awaiting the inevitable. So, no great options right now, but we're still driving down to see her and spend time with her this week. If she's starting to get palliative care, then we don't know how many more trips there will be, sad to say.
So, you know, not really in the mood for a comedy, maybe, but still, Kristen Bell carries over from "Big Miracle". This is where I planned to be on Mother's Day, and I came out one day ahead, because of the travel plans.
THE PLOT: When three overworked and under-appreciated moms are pushed beyond their limits, they ditch their conventional responsibilities for a jolt of long overdue freedom, fun and comedic self-indulgence.
AFTER: Let me see if I can follow the generational logic here - our country had the post-World War II generation of wives who became mothers, and they expected a lot. Some were immigrants, some were raised in the U.S., but they all seemed to have high standards. Mothers were expected to sacrifice everything for their children, and the plan was that this would pay off later when they could make their children feel guilty and thus one or more kids would feel obligated to take care of their mothers, provide room and board or at least financial support, when they were elderly. It was a long con, planned out well in advance, but for the most part it worked. The landscape in the 1980s and 1990s was filled with nursing homes holding all the elderly parents who could not move in with their adult children, but you know, the adult kids visited whenever they could. The next generation caught on, and pushed their children even harder, because more successful kids have better careers, and can provide better for their elderly parents, theoretically at least. So we had a whole generation of "helicopter moms" who pushed their kids relentlessly, however that whole generation got very stressed out as a result.
That generation was misled to believe that perfection was possible, attainable, which is not really true, you can strive for it but it can't be achieved, not to the satisfaction of your mother, anyway, who only wants what is "best for you", according to her definition, the only one that matters to her, and she will never let YOU define that for yourself. So this generation of perfectionists can't ever be satisfied with themselves, or THEIR kids, however a few of them have come to realize how badly they are stressing out the kids who all have ADHD or stress dreams or low self-esteem as a result. So there's been a perceived need to relax the standards a bit, or perhaps to re-define the goal since perfection is not attainable or likely, so now if you can achieve passing grades and have any kind of career goal, and still have a positive self-image, you're kind of in the clear. However, these relaxed standards, combined with internet access and allowing A.I. to complete homework assignments has now created an entirely entitled younger generation that doesn't feel they need to work at all, they can be completely picky eaters, and they have no idea how to clean up after themselves or do any household chores. Does that follow?
Amy Mitchell here is part of that perfectionist generation, she needs to have a career, a husband, two kids and she's putting all kinds of pressure on those kids to play sports, get good grades, make the right friends, etc. Meanwhile her life is starting to fall apart, her boss wants her to go full-time, her husband is internet chatting with a naked woman, and her son is satisfied with failing grades. She thinks she can still "save" her daughter, who seems very self-sufficient and self-motivating, however Amy feels very guilty about putting that pressure on her, and feels that she's failed as a mom, across the board. When she meets two other women who also feel like they're failing, and compare themselves to the adult "Mean Girls" who run the PTA, they make the non-logical leap together and say, "Hey, let's be Bad Moms". In other words, we'll never be perfect, we'll never be perfect, so let's have fun failing. This logic doesn't really compute for me, it's like saying, "Well, we're all going to die someday, so what's the point of doing anything?" or "I'll never win a Nobel Prize, so why learn chemistry or physics?" It's not productive thinking by any means.
However, there's an upside - the PTA moms who run the Bake Sale are wound WAY too tight, like here's a PowerPoint presentation about what ingredients can NOT be in baked goods because someone might be allergic to them. No nuts, no processed flour, no dairy, no unethically sourced chocolate chips - so, basically no fun either. Why do we all have to suffer and learn this list of banned ingredients when the impetus should be on the people with the allergies, to, I don't know, maybe avoid eating those things? Amy decides to run for PTA President on the platform of people doing less, not more, and it strikes a chord with all the other moms who feel like failures, who can't tell their twins apart of who have are more attracted to their nannies than their husbands. Wait, what? Nobody should aspire to be bad at anything, I mean, nobody tries to be a bad dancer or a bad singer, though that happens often. Nobody TRIES to tell jokes badly, or write bad poetry, so how can it be OK to TRY to be a bad mom? Sure, just give up as a life strategy, I love that for you.
Of course, this is all fantasy and wish fulfillment - like, what if you didn't have to hold yourself in check, you could kick your husband out just because he watches porn and find yourself a new man who's totally into you and has rock-hard abs and will also cook you dinner and cater to your every whim? I mean, there's enough hypocrisy here that things don't really add up - the same woman who is trying to teach her son that he has to buckle down and do his homework for once is also telling her boss that she wants to double her salary and also spend less time at the office. Umm, that's just not how jobs work, is it? She also starts out telling her daughter that soccer is just an extra-curricular activity, it's not as important as schoolwork - OK, so why does she go to such lengths to become PTA President, just to have as much influence on the soccer coach as Gwendolyn had, just with a different result. If it was wrong for Gwendolyn to keep Jane OFF the starting line-up, it's just as inappropriate for Amy to have her put back ON it.
It's just a silly comedy, I know, but it still needs to have some internal logic. We look at how the small things work and it tells us something about society as a whole, and this message of "give up, it's not important, things are going to work out fine" just doesn't work for me. Whatever happened to "You get out of it what you put into it," or even "just try your best"? Those ships have sailed, apparently, so now it's "undercut your opponent, use whatever dirty tricks you can to manipulate the system and grab all that you can". Wow, we really are suggesting people use the Trump playbook, aren't we? Maybe if I had kids I might feel differently about this portrayal, but the messages being sent out to women in the guise of entertainment are all rather strange.
At the end, the deposed PTA President Gwendolyn is revealed to be another person who was incorrectly striving for an impossible perfection, and is also guilty about not being able to achieve it. She reconciles with Amy and Carla and Kiki and invites them on a day-trip using her husband's private plane, but NITPICK POINT - where are they going to fly from Chicago that will get them back home in time to pick their kids up from school? Oh, right, they don't care.
This movie was so successul that there is a sequel, however they rushed it out as a Christmas movie for the following year, and I'm not ready to cut to Christmas just yet, so what I'm going to do is to circle back to it in December, I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that this year, but I will try.
Directed by Jon Lucas (writer of "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" & "Office Christmas Party") & Scott Moore (ditto)
Also starring Mila Kunis (last seen in "Goodrich"), Kathryn Hahn (last heard in "Fixed"), Christina Applegate (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Jada Pinkett Smith (last seen in "The Matrix Resurrections"), Annie Mumolo (last seen in "Queenpins"), Oona Laurence (last seen in "Pete's Dragon"), Emjay Anthony (last seen in "Insurgent"), David Walton (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Clark Duke (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Jay Hernandez (last seen in "LOL"), Wendell Pierce (last seen in "Superman" (2025)), Leah McKendrick (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl"), Megan Ferguson (last seen in "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"), Lyle Brocato (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Shauna Rappold (ditto), Wanda Sykes (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Cade Mansfield Cooksey (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), J.J. Watt, Ann Mahoney (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Turner Crumbley (ditto), Samantha Beaulieu (last seen in "Big George Foreman"), Yuka Takara (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2019)), Amy Brassette (ditto), Jackie Tuttle (last seen in "Beautiful Creatures"), Adria Tennor (last seen in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan"), Kelly Lind (last seen in "The Big Short"), Lena Clark (last seen in "Renfield"), Christine Merrill, Donna Duplantier (last seen in "The Best of Me"), Lindsey Garrett, Angela L. Larson, Christina DeRosa, Lara Grice (last seen in "Just My Luck"), Elizabeth Newcomer (last seen in "Bottoms"), Carrie Lazar (last seen in "The Alto Knights"), Nina Millin (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Yan Feldman (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Jaylen Moore (last heard in "The Bad Guys 2"), Lilly Singh (ditto), David Simpson (last seen in "Respect"), Billy Slaughter (last seen in "Homefront"), Meghan Wolfe (last seen in "Trumbo"), Jay Jablonski (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), D.A. Obahor (last seen in "Queen & Slim"), LaJessie Smith (last seen in "Freelancers"), Eugenia Kuzmina (last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre"), Mary McCloud, Harry Beckstead, Michele Ziegler, Xanthus Valan, Colin Egglesfield (last seen in "Something Borrowed"), Elvira Kunis, Karen Hahn, Lorelei Bell, Nancy Priddy, Adrienne Banfield Norris, Alice Mumolo, Kelly Angell (last seen in "The Lovebirds"), Justin Burkhamer, Ronnie Hooks, Mike R. Moreau, Christy Moritz, Gwen Parker, Gus Rhodes (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), Taryn Terrell (last seen in "The Campaign"), with a cameo from Martha Stewart (last seen in "Martha")
RATING: 4 out of 10 boxes of shitty wine
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