A Bad Moms Christmas | Rotten Tomatoes

I honestly don't understand the need for everything, nowadays at least, to become a franchise. Or for a successful movie to get a sequel, even if it might not warrant it. There's movies like Big Momma's House or Deuce Bigalow where, if you've seen it once, you don't really need to see it again as it would be repeating the same joke you already saw and it's, never, gonna be as funny the second time around. And, yet, both Big Momma's House and Deuce Bigalow received sequels. Two sequels, actually, in the case of Big Momma's House. Though, admittedly speaking, Big Momma's House and Deuce Bigalow were more gimmick-driven movies. It was about the gimmick and not necessarily about anything IN the movie. I don't think that's the case with Bad Moms, since there's no real one-and-done gimmick here. It's just that, honest, as successful as the original may have been, I don't think it needed a sequel. Then again, I am not a studio executive only focused on making money. Having said that, I mentioned the other day that the type of Christmas movies that I tend to gravitate to are those that aren't really your typical Christmas movies, be they raunchy comedies or horror. Not saying that these are always good, since Bad Santa 2 was fucking terrible. But those are the ones I gravitate to because they shy away from the saccharine and treacle that is associated with this genre. In many ways, this movie reminds me a lot of Daddy's Home 2, both of which came out around the same time. This movie came out nine days before Daddy's Home 2 and, quite surprisingly, both movies ended up being quite successful despite fulfilling the same basic niche Though, at the very least, this movie kept the tone of the original with its raunchiness, Daddy's Home 2 was a more 'family' friendly affair. Regardless, like Daddy's Home 2, this movie's remedy for being a sequel and keeping things "fresh" is introducing more mothers into the mix. Amy, Kiki and Carla's mothers are all introduced and the movie explores our lead characters' relationships with their mothers. Amy's mother, Ruth, is too controlling and dominating, wanting to do Christmas her way instead of respecting Amy's wishes, Kiki's mother, Sandy, is literally obsessed with her, needs to be near her all the time and imposes herself of Kiki's life, even at the most inopportune of moments (like when Kiki's about to have sex with her husband) and Carla's mother, Isis, is a bit of a deadbeat, only appearing in her daughter's life when she needs something. That's essentially what the movie is about. Oh and Kiki, Amy and Carla taking Christmas back and doing it their way, instead of doing everything they can to please their mothers, etc, etc, etc. That's all there is to the movie, really. And, you know what, it's not exactly bad. It's not good either. It's only slightly better than Daddy's Home 2. There's honestly really not that much to this. Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines and Susan Sarandon are all great additions to the sequel and they all play their roles perfectly, particularly Ms. Baranski, who excels at these sort of snobby and dominating roles. That's why it's such a shame that the script doesn't give any of these women, all six of them, that much to do. They attempt to explore the relationship between these three and their mothers, but they only do it on the surface level. They all deserve much better and the movie just doesn't do anything with all of these talented women. There's a lot of raunchiness, which was to be expected. Some of it works and some of it doesn't. Like Carla falling in love with Ty as she's waxing his balls, taint and asshole. This one works. Perhaps it doesn't work as well as you might think, but it works regardless. This movie also suffers from a problem the original had and that is, when Amy, Kiki and Carla are all together having dinner or whatever, one of them says something that is meant to be funny, the others laugh to reinforce that you actually witnessed a joke. If you have to tell me to laugh at a joke then that probably means that it wasn't that good to begin with. They do this a few times in the film and it goes down as well a drinking a gallon of acid. Did I say that there's not much to this movie? Because there really isn't. I had no problem watching this and I never wanted to pull my hair out, but it's also quite frustrating to see talented comedic actresses not being used to their full potential. I just think that, and this is something I have mentioned a few times, they relied way too much on the talents of the cast instead of using both, their talents on top of a strong script. But, really, writing a strong script requires actual effort. Hell, maybe the script is even worse than I'm giving it credit for and the movie gets the rating it does because of the cast. Who knows??? Still, this a decent enough movie all things considered. Its narrative is nothing, its jokes aren't memorable but the cast is good enough and that helps overcome a lot of its flaws. It's not the type of movie that I'd ever watch again, but you could do much, much worse than this for this holiday season. I know this review sucks, but there's really nothing else I can say about this movie. It's a little bland for a movie on the raunchy side, but I didn't mind watching this. It's just that I felt it should have been better.

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