Is this funny?:

• Having a child unknowingly describe sex as if it is a fight between mommy and daddy, because this has never happened in a movie before
• Calling a woman with a uni-brow a “Sasquatch”
• Having a grown person take a hit from a joint while ironically exclaiming that she is being more responsible

• A character whose anti-Semitism is only trumped by her racism

• A Kenny G reference (in 2017)
• Using the term “dicking around” a dozen times in one scene
• Santa lap dance!
• Susan Sarandon playing a terrible and abandoning mother (ok, this is pretty great. Susan Sarandon is a treasure.)
• Five-hour long Russian plays (the joke so good they made it twice…and then explained why it’s funny)
• Cheryl Hines (I’m breaking from the sarcasm here, Hines actually does quite well with what little she’s given)
• While we’re breaking the facade, the two scenes involving Kathryn Hahn and a well-endowed male stripper (played with an unflappable grin by Justin Hartley) rise to a level of raunchy comedy that succeeds more than every other gag in the film put together
• Ok, back to the cynical sarcasm:
• Multiple montages set to pop music where nothing of import occurs
• Western standoff music used outside of a Western film
• A running gag about waxing vaginas, where the punchline of the joke is that a character’s job is to wax vaginas (see how that isn’t really a joke at all when you break it down…you know)
• A film that has to convince us its funny by putting lines in the script where characters compliment each other for being funny
• A second Kenny G joke
• A desperate attempt at cashing in on a financially successful comedy by churning out a holiday-themed sequel a year after the first film came out
• A big overblown party that is set up in the beginning as if it is the climactic end to a narrative arc, when really there isn’t much of an arc at all and this “climactic” party is more of a two-minute scene with little to no repercussions
• Bad moms who really want to be good moms who can’t stand their bad moms who are really good moms deep down
• Wrapping this half-baked Christmas gift in a pathos bow too little too late
• Setting up a sequel that I’d much rather see than this film
• An hilarious Kenny G cameo (because, you know, the rule of threes)

 

A Bad Moms Christmas: C-

 

As always, thanks for reading!

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—Alex Brannan (@TheAlexBrannan)