A Bad Moms Christmas

Directors: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore

Stars: Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn

In a world of Daddies, there are the Bad Moms.

A Bad Moms Christmas opens with a flash-forward to a despondent Amy (Mila Kunis), sitting in the aftermath of a disastrous Christmas party, telling us through voiceover that she has “ruined Christmas.” The movie then flashes back to six days prior to Christmas, with title screens that are maybe just a little too over-produced counting down each day. A Bad Moms Christmas (I have to keep double-checking that “moms” is not possessive, which is oddly pertinent to the movie’s central theme) henceforth is structured like a disaster movie such as Independence Day, counting down to the event and then resolving in its aftermath. Similarly to Independence Day, it starts off very rough, but by the end has done much to win back the audience’s good graces, though its disaster is not nearly as spectacular as it would have you think at the movie’s start.

In stark contrast to the strong opening of the surprisingly good Bad Moms, which served as a welcome down to earth alternative to Suicide Squad last year, this movie’s opening is the pits. One of the strengths of the first movie (and this one, when it remembers) is that the scenarios the Moms are in are rarely that far-fetched, just slightly exaggerated versions of real life problems we all face. I left Bad Moms last year with a deeply indebted feeling to my own mom; the movies’ comedy hinges on the unseen struggles moms are expected to handle without a hitch. Contrast that with this movie’s opening, in which the daughter of Amy’s boyfriend, upon hearing Amy’s mom, Ruth (Christine Baranski) is in town early for a Christmas celebration, decides to exaggeratedly obey and then blatantly disregard the Comedy Rule of 3, as she mutters “oh my f*cking god” aloud over and over. Kids cussing didn’t play for any notable laugh in Los Angeles; maybe it’s funnier in a place where that’s more taboo? I felt bad for the child actors, who are hopeless against the new talent that media like Stranger Things and It has been sweeping in. The filmmakers here clearly want the children to be cute and say cute things cutely; ironically to be seen and not heard. Similarly, Jay Hernandez returns as Jessie, the ever-understanding boyfriend, and he’s a good sport about being a living, breathing reminder that there was a first movie and little else, save for the butt of unfortunate race humor when Ruth finally arrives and assumes he’s The Help.

Each of the main moms has their own mom in town to contend with–Amy’s mom, Ruth is in town, as well as her doting father, Hank (Peter Gallagher, who works wonders in what could have easily been a thankless role). Carla (Kathryn Hahn)–whose character note is essentially the “baddest mom who tells it like it is”–has to deal with unexpected visit of her own mom, Isis (Susan Sarandon). Isis is a drifter, a gambler and a freeloader–and, yes, there are jokes about her name. I kept expecting Sarandon to steal the show, but I’ve found she is often given roles where her presence is expected to be the punch line, not her performance. No, the best role and hands down funniest character in the movie is the uncomfortably possessive helicopter mom Sandy (Cheryl Hines). Sandy is the mom of milquetoast Kiki (Kristen Bell), and when she first drops in, unannounced, she is not only wearing a sweater with Kiki’s face on it, but she also takes advantage of a hug to smell her daughter’s hair. If you’ve seen Cheryl Hines in other things like Curb Your Enthusiasm, you already know she commits unflinchingly to every gag. It’s a good cringe in an ocean of bad cringes.

Kunis herself is given very little to work with, and is often left adrift in scenes where her only recourse is to make a “you gotta be kidding me” face in quiet, suffering indignation. The film also feels the need to make callbacks to its predecessor, but up the ante–and I was reminded in a not good way of how The Hangover series managed to take every funny gag in the first movie and murder it by the series’ end. The first Bad Moms has a fun and liberating montage set to Iconapop’s “I Love It” in a supermarket that feels far-fetched but almost surreal in its abandon. Meanwhile, Bad Moms Christmas has a similar montage scored to overly upbeat covers of holiday tunes near the beginning that feels like it would never happen reasonably in real life, and involves borderline sexual harassment/humiliation of a mall Santa (I lost track of which mom was spanking whom) as well as a very real theft of a Christmas tree from Lady Foot Locker.

Hahn’s Carla is given the most attempts at humor, but fortunately also the movie’s funniest scene, in which a bright-eyed male stripper (Justin Hartley) comes to her spa for a “balls, taint, and assh*le” waxing, which they remind you of at every beat. The dialogue itself in this scene isn’t anything special, but similarly to Cheryl Hines’ success in bringing the funny, both Hartley and Hahn commit unflinchingly to the absurd physical comedy of the scene. It works, and provides a great laugh.

Clearly what doesn’t work in the movie very much falls flat, but Bad Moms Christmas, just like its ragtag cast of characters, kept winning me back with how well the things that worked did work. I am a sucker for movies that encourage the viewer to take a closer look at the people around them, and the central issue of each mom is never chalked up to, “oh, they’re just crazy.” There’s always a reason, and it is often shared with astonishing humanity. Hines’ Sandy would be the most easy to write off as crazy, and after a therapy session with Dr. Karl (Wanda Sykes) goes awry, Dr. Karl says to Kiki, “Your mom was probably a pretty normal person until you came along. Then you were always crying, and it made her a little more crazy. Then she lost her husband, and that made her a little more crazy. Then you dated that guy she didn’t like, and she got even crazier. It’s not your mom…it’s you.” No therapist would ever say this, of course (Sykes’ character’s unconventional therapy style being another thing people who haven’t seen the first movie might be confused by), but it is a reminder that we are as much an architect of our parents’ idiosyncrasies as they are of ours. A much more tender moment comes later, when Hines says, quietly, “I guess I just always miss my husband around this time of year.”

Similarly, Hank has a wonderful heart to heart with Amy after the underwhelming disaster the movie was building to. I’ve seen marriages like Hank’s and Ruth’s, and the movie is accurate in its depiction of a long-lasting marriage where one member is sometimes a terror and the other is sometimes an enabler…working. To paraphrase and falsely attribute the Dalai Lama: “When love is there, what can you do?”

If you’ve had trouble envisioning a plot through-line for A Bad Moms Christmas, it’s because the three storylines happen pretty independently of one another, with the Moms occasionally meeting up, such as in an inexplicable Skyzone montage (the movie loves its montages, and by the looks of it also really loves Skyzone). In fact, it’s unclear as to what the movie’s trying to accomplish until the very end–and then it is all too clear. A Bad Moms Christmas is meant to play the same role Iron Man 2 played for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. One can only hope the Bad Moms Cinematic Universe ends in a crossover with Daddy’s Home, where the Mommies and Daddies do battle to see who, in fact, is home. The movie is, as my viewing buddy and fellow After the Credits contributor Jordan Berry put it, sequel bait. That would normally upset me, except for the fact that I truly believe the movie’s heart is in the right place. Furthermore, it’s a very good time, if you’re able to stomach the moments when the humor falls ever so flat. This movie definitely never quite reaches the level of quality that the original Bad Moms possessed, but if you think I won’t be in that theater seat again for Bad Grandmas, you’ve got another thing coming.

C+