Bad Moms

BAD MOMS (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, 2016)

Amy Mitchell (Mila Kunis) manages to juggle two kids in school and all the associated obligations, part-time work at a coffee co-op that’s more like a full-time job, and the culturally expected duties of an American wife at home. When she discovers her man-child husband having an affair via webcam, she kicks him out of the house. In BAD MOMS Amy can deal with a failing marriage, but she can no longer put up with the demands of the Parent-Teacher Association president Gwendolyn James (Christina Applegate). Her refusal to go along with rigid PTA orders puts her on Gwendolyn’s enemies list but wins her the appreciation of Carla (Kathryn Hahn) and Kiki (Kristen Bell), two other overwhelmed mothers.

As a single mother and shameless flirt, Carla is pleased to make the acquaintance of someone else who has run afoul of the school’s parental hierarchy. Kiki is just happy to socialize with anyone, as her four kids give her virtually no time for herself. Amy, Carla, and Kiki are tired of the pressure to live up to an unattainable standard and thus vow from now on to be bad moms, although Carla was kind of already on that path regardless. If they want to do lunch and hang out at the movies in the middle of the day, so be it. They enjoy cutting loose for a while, but inevitably their flouting of the unspoken rules for mothers begins to have adverse effects on them and their families.

BAD MOMS is written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the duo that also wrote THE HANGOVER. While the women get to exercise some of their worst behavior, within reason, the film contains the sentimentality and platitudes of a Mother’s Day card, albeit one with a lot more dirty words. Unlike THE HANGOVER’s Wolfpack, whose raucous and destructive behavior gets accepted with a wink because boys will be boys, the moms don’t behave irresponsibly to a similar degree. The moms, of course, aren’t really bad; they just feel that way because of how they and others have defined their societal roles. Even within a film providing fleeting wish fulfillment for mothers, BAD MOMS has a hard time letting these women enjoy some guilt-free relief because we know somebody has to keep everything just so and it won’t be dads, amirite. *fist bump*

In fairness, the double standard gets challenged with Hahn’s Carla, who presents herself as an exception to the hard-striving mother ideal. She doesn’t seem to sweat her questionable actions or much of anything. When the moms share stories of parental mistakes, only her anecdotes cross the line between female bonding through mutual understanding and thinking about calling children’s protective services. Where Amy and Kiki are held back as characters because they are ultimately intended to be empowering figures, Hahn gives a bawdy performance that delivers on the concept of suburban moms breaking bad. Carla isn’t trying to impress anyone, so Hahn is allowed to let her wildness be expressed most humorously.

Bell’s reactions are quite amusing when Kiki unwittingly finds herself and her hooded sweatshirt being used to demonstrate how to manipulate an uncircumcised penis. She’s also funny responding to any bit of socializing like patiently-awaited scraps from the table. BAD MOMS is less sure of how to use Kunis’s comedic skills and often resorts to the jokes stemming from her aggression and humiliation. Overall, the film leaves the lingering feeling that these funny women and others in the cast have been shortchanged by a screenplay that finds the idea of moms who buck the norms to balance their lives as parents, spouses, and individuals more hilarious than the reality of them doing it.

Grade: C

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES (Adam McKay, 2013)

The saying doesn’t go that the family that reads the news together stays together, but it ought to as far as Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is concerned.  Ron and his wife Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) are living the dream as television news co-anchors at a New York City network affiliate in ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES until she is selected over him to fill the opening on the six o’clock evening broadcast.  To make matters worse, Ron is fired.  For a man who places his self-worth in his occupation--OK, and his hair too--it’s more than he can take.  He abandons Veronica and their six-year-old son and returns to San Diego with the hope of reclaiming past glory.

Renewed fame and fortune aren’t awaiting him, sending Ron into a depression, but the big break he needs arrives in the nick of time.  Freddie Shapp (Dylan Baker) approaches with the offer of manning the desk at Global News Network, the first 24-hour cable news channel.  Ron tracks down former members of his news team Champ Kind (David Koechner), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), and Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) and goes back to New York to take his rightful place in front of the TelePrompter.  Relegated to the dead of night shift, Ron has no choice but to traffick in sensationalism.

Many Hollywood comedies, especially sequels, play it safe by giving audiences more of what they already approved.  Ferrell and co-writer and director Adam McKay certainly don’t skimp on repeating by slightly tweaking similar bits that fans loved in the original 2004 film.  They also acknowledge the fans by giving popular secondary characters showcase moments, although such inclusions can make ANCHORMAN 2 seem overstuffed.  In addition to the tried-and-true, they make room for a lot of new and strange comedic ideas.  Not all of the weird straying from the otherwise straightforward redemption story hits the mark.  Ron’s self-imposed isolation in a lighthouse after losing his sight takes things too far afield for too long without enough payoffs in laughs.  Still with something this ambitious the clunkers have to be taken with the good, of which there’s a sufficient amount.

ANCHORMAN 2 sets its satirical aim on the 24/7 news cycle, a fat and deserving target if ever there was one.  Anymore it seems as though Sidney Lumet’s NETWORK is being referenced as a how-to guide for ratings chasing above all than understood as a denouncement of it.  The absurd content that Ron and team favor to fill their news hole permits ANCHORMAN 2 to make its points humorously and effectively that the public gets the news it deserves when it chooses to reward bottom of the barrel reporting.  Ferrell and McKay aren’t letting the information gatekeepers off the hook, but their serious message couched in silly jokes is that infotainment and manufactured outrage are not in the best interest of viewers.

Although media criticism provides weight to ANCHORMAN 2, the escalation of jokes, obvious and obscure referential humor, and sheer number of oddball gags ensure that the film doesn’t forget that its primary purpose is to amuse.  Its hit-to-miss ratio can seem inconsistent, but that’s only because so much is thrown out there to determine what plays.  Ferrell has his share of duds on his filmography, a fact that holds true for anyone who works as often as he does and takes so many risks as an actor, screenwriter, and producer.  Nevertheless, as reflected in his overall body of work and ANCHORMAN 2, his comedic instincts are correct enough to make him worth trusting more than his contemporaries.

Grade: B

Hall Pass

HALL PASS (Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly, 2011)

At first wandering eyes and rampant sex talk from married men Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) earn them withering looks and chastising from their wives. Eventually such juvenile behavior gets each of them a so-called “hall pass” from their spouses. They are given a guilt-free week off from their marital commitments to do as they please, including sleeping with other women if the opportunities present themselves.

Their disgusted wives Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate) are following the advice of a friend who suggests that Rick and Fred have inflated senses of their virility and attractiveness. The hall pass functions as a reverse psychology tool that will ultimately provide them with renewed appreciation for the relationships they have and disabuse them of their lustful manners.

While their wives are away, Rick and Fred hit the town with their gawking buddies to flex the old ladykilling muscles. Having envisioned seven days of debauchery, they check into a hotel to keep from soiling their homes, but in reality these two talk a bigger game than they can play. They prove themselves inept at hitting on women. Most nights they’re ready to hit the sack well before last call.

Despite their incompetent flirting, Rick appears to be making some headway with Australian barista Leigh (Nicky Whelan) while Fred’s desperation lowers his initially high selectivity. Meanwhile, Maggie and Grace are forced to examine their willingness to grant the hall passes when they find guys putting the moves on them.

HALL PASS directors Bobby and Peter Farrelly, who are also among the four credited screenwriters, have made a career finding humanity among the crude and outrageous. Amid the puerile gags in THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, KINGPIN, and DUMB AND DUMBER, the films also possess a generosity of spirit for the foolish characters. HALL PASS features the Farrellys’ familiar combination of vulgarity and sweetness, but this time around the brothers mostly miss the mark.

HALL PASS plays like a third or fourth sequel to THE HANGOVER filtered through cheap pop psychology. Stale bits about marijuana brownies and masturbation come across as the last refuges of the creatively exhausted. While the film elicits occasional laughs, especially in the uproarious end credits sequence with Stephen Merchant, oftentimes it feels like the jokes are more restrained or halfhearted. That old touch isn’t absent, though. Leave it to the Farrellys to deliver a quality explosive diarrhea joke.

HALL PASS’S premise sounds like something out of a here today, gone tomorrow self-help bestseller making the rounds on morning TV shows. Thankfully it’s treated with about the same seriousness since the running joke is that Maggie and Grace haven’t really risked anything in unleashing their big talking husbands.

The problem is that, like this year’s THE DILEMMA and NO STRINGS ATTACHED, HALL PASS dodges to some degree the issue at the heart of this relationship comedy. Why must these men make such displays of their attraction to other women while in the presence of their wives, and why is the solution to have the couples communicate even less? The film doesn’t need scenes of them meeting with a counselor, but it could stand to have more interaction between husbands and wives, if merely to observe the embarrassment these men are causing.

The main cast is likable, maybe too much so as the boys embark on a week of attempted horndogging that is intended to be their undoing while the girls sit back satisfied in their superiority. Wilson delivers an amiable, low key performance that suggests Rick’s wrongs owe more to thoughtlessness and guilt by association. He seems too decent to find himself in this predicament. For all of Fred’s bluster, Sudeikis isn’t a creep as much as he is trying to live up to society’s image of masculinity. Their inherent harmlessness counteracts with the film’s need to take them down a couple pegs.

As the guys’ legendary womanizing friend Coakley, Richard Jenkins brings the sleaziness that HALL PASS is eager to poke fun at but doesn’t dare invest in the leads. In his very funny pick-up artist role Jenkins reeks of patheticalness like the trendy body spray he’s surely drenched in.

Although it’s refreshing that Fischer and Applegate are appealing and loving wives rather than ballbusters, they’re given so little to do and shoehorned into some dumb subplots that their efforts are squandered.

With HALL PASS the Farrellys strive to cut loose like they first did seventeen years ago, but the film’s slack nature feels like they are growing out of the gross-out humor game. Until a dose of cold reality,Rick and Fred hang onto fantasies better left in the past. The question is if the Farrellys need a similar intervention to realize they should move on from their crude younger days or if they’re better off channeling their comedic energies differently. The middle ground, at least in this instance, doesn’t really suit them.

Grade: C-