Hollywood, generally speaking, does not have an expansive palette when it comes to films with a festive flavour.
Movies are either unbearably sentimental, laden with so much holiday sugar that sugar canes look on in envy, or so brusquely raunchy that even the merest whiff of chestnuts roasting and visions of sugar plums dancing fall, unrecognised and unloved, beneath a stampede of crass humour.
That’s not to say that either type of film isn’t worth your time – the Hallmark Channel, for instance, is counting on viewers lapping up their offering of 33 new films this year – but the narrative notes are limited and not always as diversely festive as Santa ordered.
Bad Moms Christmas, the themed sequel to 2016’s comedy hit Bad Moms, manages, against all expectations given the one note raunchiness of its trailers, to deftly sit between these two extremes, giving us all the warm-and-fuzzy accoutrements of the season while throwing in some raunch and a good deal more emotional resonance than any of the promotion implied.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that it’s subtle in any way.
No, this is cinema with a great big well-telegraphed narrative mallet always at the ready, characters so broadly sketched they could teeter into the tropes abyss and no one would notice, and sentiment laid on so thick reindeer would slip and slide in disarray if they attempted to land a sleigh upon it.
Nuanced it is not; but for all the standard trappings of the season that it hugs close to itself like a stocking full of unopened presents, Bad Mom’s Christmas is surprisingly affecting.
It manages this most unexpected of feats by wisely bringing in Christine Baranski, Susan Sarandon and Cheryl Hines as the mothers of the three protagonists who collectively make up the trio of less than ideal maternal figures.
That’s not to say that Mila Kunis (Amy), who effectively anchors the film, acting as its narrative voice, Kristen Bell (Kiki) and Kathryn Hahn (Carla) fall down on the job at all; they are as entertaining as ever, every bit as simultaneously enamoured and repulsed by motherhood as they were in Bad Moms.
In fact, it’s their comedic chops, particularly Hahn who is damn near brilliant as the daughter of still-partying, irresponsible rock chick Isis (Sarandon) that give the film much of its jaded, tired of the season but wanting to give their families a special holiday, vibe.
But when all is said and done, and the camel has trampled all over the Christmas tree (yes that actually sort of happens), it’s the three elder mothers who give the film that extra zing.
Baranaski is in the MVP in this regard, bringing her trademark brittle iciness to her role as Ruth, Amy’s über-perfectionistic mother who manages, in her first five minutes in her daughter’s home, to insult her choice of decorations, hairstyle and food preparation.
It’s all effortlessly delivered, with Baranski investing just the right amount of hilarious tartness into each line to make you laugh even as you cringe at the offhandedly cruel way she’s treating her only child.
So comprehensive is Ruth, who’s determined her grandchildren Dylan (Emjay Anthony) and Jane (Oona Laurence) will have the best, most perfect Christmas in the wake of their parents’ recent divorce, annihilation of her daughter that you wonder how it is that Amy hasn’t already stabbed her to death in her sleep after a drug-laced eggnog or two.
It’s all a set-up for the central battle in the film – between the bad moms who simply want a trimmed-down, chilled Christmas with Chinese takeaway on the big night and wound-down family time on the day, and the expectation that mothers don’t enjoy Christmas and must always suffer for the happiness of others.
None of this conflict is delivered with even a skerrick of delicacy but then this is a big ballsy, give Santa a lap chance while smashed off your face film so you’re hardly going to get Oscar-level obliqueness here.
Somehow for all its hamfistness, both narratively and character-wise – Sarandon is an archetypal woman-child mess while Hines’ Sandy is way too involved in her daughter’s life, right down to watching her initiate sex with her husband Kent (Lye Brocato) – and the rather obvious conflicts that arise, Bad Moms Christmas ends up having a bigger-than-expected heart.
And not, in that gushy Hallmark Channel kind of way.
True it edges close at times such as the near-to-climactic scene where Amy and Ruth have a relationship-redefining heart-to-heart in midnight mass, or Isis’s miraculous appearance at Christmas lunch, but the descent into overwhelming levels of saccharinenss is averted by deft use of over the top silliness.
Take Carla meeting and falling in love with beyond hunky male exotic dancer Ty Swindle (Justin Hartley) in the last couple of days leading up to Christmas; it’s ridiculously corny in one sense, but manages to also be sweetly affecting against all odds thanks to the film’s wholehearted embrace of the wackiness of it all.
Kunis and Baranski also make a great double act, one a beleagured daughter, the other an imperious mum, who battle mightily, upping the levels of tinsel-trimmed festive brinkmanship ’til you wonder if anyone will emerge alive before ending up as the mother-daughter act Amy, and secretly Ruth, always wanted.
Sure A Bad Mom’s Christmas is cliched, trope-heavy (though visually that works a treat with lush decorations all around) and sentimental but it’s also damn funny, unexpectedly emotionally resonant in way that often lifts itself above treacly sentiment to be bearable and even, at times, affecting, and raunchily hilarious, proof that you can have your warm-and-fuzzy Christmas and still be a little naught and counter-traditional too.
