A Bad Moms Christmas movie review: Disappointing sequel with frivolous attempts to empower women

It seems like 2017 is the year that continues to offer unexpected, horrible surprises, like Trump becoming the POTUS, and now a sequel to Bad Moms. Unless you love terrible sequels, prepare yourselves for a volley of unfunny and irritating jokes, an overlong runtime and eye roll worthy attempts to empower women. [caption id=“attachment_4192683” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A still from A Bad Moms Christmas[/caption] A Bad Moms Christmas has more moms than Bad Moms, as well as more expletives and more ‘naughty’ situations, but no beating heart to make it all worthwhile. This time we have Amy (Mila Kunis) struggling to plan her Christmas holidays, and her friends Kiki (Kristen Bell) and Carla (Kathryn Hahn) are of no help because their priorities revolve around their own kids. Adding to this situation is the arrival of these women’s parents (Christine Baransky, Cheryl Hines, Susan Sarandon) who only complicate matters instead of solving them. It’s difficult to be able to talk about a movie where one doesn’t fall into the target demographic. This film is essentially made for people who are stressed out with their own kids and would find something relatable in the many unsightly situations the characters on screen seem to find themselves in. That’s a fair enough attempt at filmmaking, if anything in the film were worthy of praise. Directors Scott Moore and Jon Lucas don’t really bring us a heartwarming parable to the joyous downsides of planning vacations with children, they simply give you a crass comedy in the vein of Chips under the garb of ‘real world problems’. So the hundredth time we hear a kid swearing, or an otherwise well brought up woman doing something socially unacceptable, it feels like a Jackass episode stretched into a movie. Sure, it’s escapism and there should be no rules about how far a filmmaker can take things when it comes to comedy, but there’s no denying that this feels like a cynical cash grab, a film fast tracked just because the previous movie made a ton of money. The main source of comedy in the film is the constant insults by the older women towards the younger ones, making you wonder what point the film is actually trying to make. If you like boring penis jokes, Sexy Santa sight gags, and an endless stream of product placement, by all means go and see the film. If you’re looking for a truly incisive comedy on the setbacks of being a mom in the modern world, you’re better off popping in the DVD of the British horror comedy Prevenge.