The characters in this sweary, libidinous comedy sequel worry not one jot about money. Cash flies around, whether spent on live partridges, houses, alcohol or male strippers. That said, the audience I saw it with (in a real cinema, at 11am) didn’t seem to feel short-changed. True, we weren’t exactly a full house. But all four punters, a white middle-aged couple and two teenage girls in hijabs, just couldn’t stop chuckling.
Like the extremely profitable, genuinely cathartic original, the script comes from The Hangover legends Jon Lucas and Scott Moore.
With only a couple of weeks to Christmas, our three Chicago-based heroines, Amy (Mila Kunis), Carla (Kathryn Hahn) and Kiki (Kristen Bell) have their homes invaded. By their very own mums! I mean, moms! Anna’s mom (Christine Baranski) is a hoity-toity control freak. Carla’s mom (Susan Sarandon) is a flinty rock chick. Kiki’s mom (Cheryl Hines) is needy.
Baranski and Hines are fantastic, nailing the physical humour (they’re a hoot at an indoor trampoline park) and any killer lines (Hines’s character, in order to make Kiki feel sorry for her, claims she has “cancer of the heart, stage 12”).
Meanwhile, Hahn’s is the most startling performance (Carla’s forever making love-hungry, Janis Joplin eyes at her distracted parent). You feel sorry for the rest of the cast. It’s like watching nice kids play musical chairs, with too few chairs. There’s not enough drama to go round and, over and over again, Kunis, Bell and Sarandon seem surplus to requirements.
Girls Trip was altogether more logical and bold (its heroines had, like, jobs and real problems). Still, that’s beside the point. Bad Moms 2, in that it could have been so much worse, winds up not being bad at all.
