2016’s surprise hit Bad Moms struck a chord with viewers by suggesting that mums have too much to worry about and deserve a bit more help. This seasonal follow-up starts off by touching on the same theme — one that’s particularly true over Christmas — but then swerves abruptly left into another ‘Nightmare Relatives Are Visiting’ comedy. The results are not bad, but the attempt to cram in filthy comedy mean this is more Christmas Eve in the drunk tank than Silent Night.
It will never rank among the Christmas classics.
On the positive side, the new relatives are played by Christine Baranski, Susan Sarandon and Cheryl Hines, mothers to — respectively — Mila Kunis’ newly divorced Amy, Kathryn Hahn’s outrageous Carla and Kristen Bell’s meek Kiki. Each mother similarly neatly falls into a different stereotype: Ruth (Baranski) is controlling; Isis (Sarandon) neglectful and even exploitative; Sandy (Hines) desperately needy. Some of the renegotiation of relationship boundaries and eventual bonding rings true, but far more of it is played so broadly as to fall far outside the realm of human experience: what mother, however clingy, actually watched her daughter and son-in-law in bed?
The problem is that the film can’t find a story to focus on. Early scenes suggest it’s about the original trio deciding to take the Christmas planning down several notches, just as they recalibrated their workloads in the first film. But then the mothers arrive and it becomes about relations with wider families and working through mother-daughter conflicts — yet in a way that ties in barely at all to the original plot. With this cast, and Baranski in particular, there can’t help but be good moments, but they’re stuffed in amid so much absurdity — grand theft Christmas tree, charity scams, all-out brawls — that the emotion is occasionally lost. It’ll entertain you while on the verge of a turkey coma, but it will never rank among the Christmas classics.
