Movie Flight Recommendation: Bad Moms (2016)
When I select an in-flight movie to watch, I have a few important criteria to consider:
- Low special effects: The movie can’t have a lot of cool effects that I’d rather watch in my home theater.
- Not great sounding: As with the special effects, I don’t want the movie to have an amazing soundtrack, amazing bass, or great 3D audio when I’m on an airplane
- Not deep: With all of the distractions on a plane, I want the story to be fairly straight forward so that it’s not too hard to follow
With this in mind, I usually try to focus on comedies and dramas as they generally are more about setting the stage with dialog than with amazing effects and sounds.
Today’s movie flight recommendation up for consideration is Bad Moms. On Delta airlines, the movie is 100 minutes and 38 seconds long, which includes 4 minutes, 32 seconds of ending credits (it’s a little longer than that, but there are funny interviews with the stars and their moms during some of the earlier credits), making the movie around an hour and 36 minutes long. This is a good duration for flights that last a couple of hours.
The movie stars Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryhn Hahn, who are moms that are fed up with how the world treats mothers and how demanding school and work are. Christina Applegate plays the head of the school’s Parent Teacher Association.
Before I start, I’ll give one warning: There is some brief full frontal female nudity in Bad Moms. This was surprising to me, as I assumed Delta wouldn’t show that on their planes.
The premise of the movie is interesting, presenting the issues woman face trying to be perfect mothers balancing the entire household and a career. When Mila Kunis catches her husband on his computer, she assumes he’s watching porn and she wants to know what he’s into. As she approaches the computer, she realizes he’s actually talking to a naked woman (see: nudity, above) who he’s been seeing for nearly a year.
From here, Bad Moms devolves into caricatures. The moms in the PTA are portrayed as overbearing control freaks. The recent widower has no backstory other than he looks hot and his wife is dead, so he’s fair game for Mila Kunis, and the moms all comment on his looks. Kunis’ boss does nothing but rollerskate around the office, and when she leaves the company, it quickly falls apart. Every other man in the movie is portrayed as incompetent or afraid of Christina Applegate’s character. Even NFL great J.J. Watt gets in on the action as a coach who lets Applegate control the team.
The highlight of the movie was the start of the credits, where the stars of the movie were sitting with their mothers and talking about how they were raised. One actress recalled how her mother told her that she had to clean the fireplace so that Santa could visit on Christmas. Bell’s mom said, “Of course you lie to your kids and go through their things.” And finally the best line: “They survived in spite of us.”
Bad Moms itself was shallow, depicted every man as either eye candy or incompetent, and overall just didn’t hit like it could’ve. If it tried to be a commentary on how movies depict women, it could’ve had some success. If it dug into the characters and made them more believable, it could’ve had some success. Maybe our women readers will enjoy the film more than I did, but aside from a few scenes, the movie just fell flat for me, so I recommend finding a different film to watch on your next flight.
- Starring: Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryhn Hahn, and Christina Applegate
- Movie Score: 3/10
- Fezmid’s Flight Score: 10/10
- Duration: 96 minutes (excluding credits)
- Overall: Not recommended
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