I hadn't planned to see Bad Moms, the new comedy about . . . bad moms. In general, anything about the supposed cliquey suburban mom culture that I have thankfully escaped (if it exists) by not living in the suburbs either stresses me out or pisses me off. But a friend had seen the movie and said it was funny, I'm on the beach vacationing (by myself!),yesterday evening it rained, and the only other movies showing at the nearby theater are either animated, sequels, thrillers, or some combination of them all. Plus, who doesn't love Christina Applegate?
I had heard the movie was kind of a chick power flick. It wasn't. Quite the contrary, it was distressingly regressive.
Here are some of the problems with the movie, in no particular order: SPOILERS AHEAD!
1. Mila Kunis's daughter, who is 12, is worried that she will not get into an Ivy League school if she isn't a starter on her soccer team. Her mother tut tuts. "You're only 12." Meanwhile, Kunis's son, more or less the same age, is a total slacker. His mom does his homework. He gets D's on tests. He doesn't participate in any extracurricular activities.
12 is a bit young to worry about college. But not all that young if you want to go to an elite private school. A kid whose main extracurricular is being a member of a soccer team, and who also takes Chinese once a week, is most likely not getting into an Ivy. It doesn't matter what gender the kid is. But, suppose the kid is a girl, and she has great grades and good test scores. What college will she go to? It's not all that unlikely that she'll get into the same colleges as her slacker brother. Why? Because of the well-documented phenomenon of affirmative action for male applicants at elite colleges, that trickles down to all higher education. Starting at the Ivies, the boy applicants are, as a group, simply not as competitive as the girls. If there were gender-blind admissions then the Ivies would quickly have a disproportionately female student body. So the high school boys who sit around and play computer games while their female friends are leading clubs, doing volunteer work, and generally exhausting themselves get a leg up.
(I went to an Ivy League school. I remember once helping a male friend with his resume. He showed me his draft and I said, "It looks like you haven't really done anything." His response was, "Of course not. Who at our age has?" Well, me and pretty much all of our female classmates.)
In the movie, Kunis is a Bad Mom because her daughter feels pressure to perform. But if her daughter wants to go to an elite school, that presssure is not a feeling, it is a reality.
2. The movie denigrates teachers and school administrators. Speaking of the Ivies, there's this throwaway line from Kunis' daughter: "If I can't get into an Ivy, I might just as well be a teacher."
My husband went to an Ivy, where he got his teaching certificate. Then he taught public school for a year. One year. Because it was too hard for him. My daughter aspires to go to an Ivy, and she wants to be a teacher. Screw you, Kunis' daughter.
3. All the dads in the movie suck. Kunis and her husband split up, and he moves out of the family home. A while later he begs to get back together, because he misses the kids. Why? He's divorcing his wife, not his children. Why doesn't he see his kids after e has moved out? What's wrong with him?
The only dad that doesn't suck is Kunis' love interest. He's a widower, we're told, so he does the mom work like dropping his kids off at school. But . . . he doesn't make anything for the bake sale that is one of the central conflicts of the movie. Why not? All the moms do. What's wrong with him? Why does he get to go to a bar where he runs into Kunis? Who's taking care of his kids?
Also, the love interest has exactly one character trait: He has washboard abs. How? Kunis only gets to go to the gym once a week, and she's got her kids' father in the picture. Why does the boyfriend, who is a single parent, manage to work out enough to be totally hot? (Kunis is too, of course, but that's the actor, not the character.)
4. When Kristen Bell's character gets empowered and yells at her husband for not helping more with the kids, the worst thing she can call him is "pussy." All bad parents are automatically female.
5. Mila Kunis got pregnant in college. Now she essentially runs a huge Starbucks-like corporation. What kind of drive was required to get her there in twelve years, while raising two kids with only minimal help? Did she get her MBA? What is the backstory there? If she's so awesome, why can't she fire her secretary who comes to work hungover and high?
6. The work that PTA's do is depicted as stupid and worthless. This is maddening. Parent leaders at my kids' schools, and schools all over my city, put in countless hours to improve the schools. Fundraising includes bake sales, auctions, candy sales, collecting pennies . . . The parents at my kids' elementary school raise tens of thousands of dollars each year through their hard work. That money fuds field trips, books for classrooms, improvements to the physical plant. Sure, Mila, cut out the bake sales. But don't come crying to me when your third grader doesn't get to go to Plimouth Plantation for a field trip.
7. Major innovations in schools are depicted as stupid and worthless. Applegate's character suggests that the school go to a year-round model. She suggests it because she is power-mad and crazy. But lots of schools consider that model. Why? Because it is well-documented that kids who do not get enrichment activities over the summer -- generally, low-income kids -- lose more ground than kids who do and fall further behind. I don't want a year-round model, but it's not stupid.
8. The major takeaway from the movie is that moms are, in fact, bad. If you do too much for your kids you're bad. If you don't do enough for them, you're bad. If you want to be a good mom, you must find that extraordinarily narrow sweet spot in the middle and not deviate by an inch.
Kunis starts off as a bad mom because she does too much for her kids. She steps back, the kids (well, her son) steps up, and now she's a good mom.
Bell is a bad mom because she lets her husband get away with not doing enough for the kids. She steps up, he steps up, now she's a good mom.
Kathryn Hahn is a bad mom because she doesn't do enough for her son. So she starts making him healthy lunches that they both hate and promises to go to his next baseball game even though it will make her miserable. Now she's a good mom.
Gag me.
9. Kunis' son teaches himself to cook. Miraculously he also teaches himself to clean the kitchen so well that nobody even knows that he has been cooking. This is stupid.
(It's also reminiscent of an earlier and better Christina Applegate movie, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. In a very funny montage in that movie the teenage brother of Applegate's character learns to cook by watching cooking shows on tv. Where's the backstory for Kunis' son in this movie?)
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