The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Words are not easy to come by when it comes to describing the experience of sitting through and watching A Bad Mom’s Christmas. Adjectives such as agonising, laborious and torturous definitely spring to mind, while notions of fun, joy and genuine entertainment seem to have been lost somewhere along the way. It’s a shame, too, since the first Bad Moms movie, although far from original or groundbreaking, was a relatively entertaining R-rated flick, mainly thanks to the strong chemistry between the three leads. Rushing to bring more of the same, the film’s Christmas-set follow up is, well, a rather disappointing mess with the story struggling to land a joke or any meaning to a film that wasn’t so great to begin with.

After having bonded in the first film, Amy (Kunis), Kiki (Bell) and Carla (Hahn), are now best of buddies. Drowning in the amount of stress that Christmas tends to bring, Amy decides that it’s best if her and her two kids, Dylan (Anthony) and Jane (Laurence), as well as her boyfriend Jessie (Hernandez) and his daughter, Lori (Greenblatt), enjoy a low-key and, most importantly, stress-free holiday where decorations and presents do not have to be perfect. 

Her besties are also on board with the idea of ‘taking Christmas back’, however, before they can even begin putting their plan into action, all of their mothers decide to drop in for a holiday visit. For Amy, this means having to put up with her super-controlling-perfectionist of a mother, Ruth (Baranski); for Kiki, she must deal with her super-clingy mother, Sandy (Hines) who, ever since her husband passed, wants nothing more than to spend every minute with her daughter and as for single-mom Carla, she will have to find a way to deal with her long-absent mother Isis (Sarandon) who only shows up when she needs money.

Biting off more than they can chew, A Bad Moms Christmas is one terribly stuffed, tediously plotted and an uneven mess. While the first film was somewhat tolerable – and dare we say even entertaining in parts –the second one, which decides to expand its already thin premise by introducing three new characters to the game, feels like it was put together from scraps of ideas – none good unfortunately. What’s worse is that it’s all executed in the sloppiest of ways possible. Lack of both energy and creativity shows throughout the running minutes, with the story struggling to find its way out of the numerous clichés, in order to deliver one decent comedic moment which, in this case, there is definitely a shortage of.

That said, the only positive thing that can be said about this whole mess is Kathryn Hahn’s performance as Carla, who finds herself falling for a sexy dancing Santa, played by This is Us star, Justin Hartley. However, as entertaining as Carla may be, her onscreen presence is not enough to save Bad Moms; a movie which could easily be a contender for one of the worst films of 2017.