We’ve hit the tail end of 2017 and we’re getting hit by some of the year’s most mediocre American comedy sequels, among which a focus on parenthood is weirdly common. Bad Moms 2 is out barely a year after the first movie and while it does provide some laughs, it foolishly tries to be a tear-jerker as well as a knee-slapper.
This time the Bad Moms are joined by their bad moms at Christmas time. The bad grandmoms are pretty wild – one’s a reckless, pot smoking thief; one’s a racist, snobby aristocrat and one’s a creep infatuated with her daughter in the sort of way Norman Bates was infatuated with his mother.
These mother/daughter relationships are meant to be heightened versions of ones that exist in real life, but they’re so heightened that they’re cartoonish and actually nothing like real life. This makes for some good comedy fodder, but robs the film of any chance of dramatic oomph which, shit me days, they try frustratingly hard to achieve. The sappiness of the inevitable fight-and-reconciliation scenes is bizarrely full on and dragged out way too long.
Despite what the trailers and marketing suggest, there’s very little boozing, dirty dancing or men stripping in this movie. What raunchy humour there is lands well only as often as it falls flat, and unfortunately there’s not enough of it to recommend a trip to the cinema, unless you’re in the mood for something decidedly average.
Credit where credit’s due, though, there is an extended conversation sequence during which a woman praises the size of a man’s genitals and peers into his butthole while he pulls his cheeks apart. That bit was, for me, the most heart-warming moment in the whole film.
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