Directed by: Andrew Erwin & John Erwin
Starring: Sarah Drew, Logan White, Patricia Heaton, Sean Astin, Trace Adkins, Abbie Cobb, Robert Amaya
Moms' Night Out was doomed from the start. The trailers promise a wild and crazy night out for three women (joined by a fourth) looking for a break from their harried lives. Their well-meaning but dopey husbands promise to watch the kids. Like the movie's tagline reads, "What Could Go Wrong?" Things go wrong from the start, but none of them are funny or daring. We watch in stunned silence at the screen. How can people this dumb hold jobs or even walk and chew gum at the same time? One of the women walks confidently towards the camera in slow motion before her heel gives way and she nearly twists her ankle, so there you go.
The main character is Allyson (Drew), an overburdened mom of three who has lost her happy. She aspires to be a blogger (although there is little evidence she can write anything of interest), but her kids keep making messes and doing things that movie kids do. You know, turn the house upside down and leave it looking like a war zone. Throw in Allyson's obsessive fear of germs and leaving the lids off of the cleaning products and you have a real disaster in the making. Allyson never comes across as a real human being, just a series of neuroses and unreasonable fears. She doesn't need a night out. She needs treatment. It's little wonder her uber-supportive husband Sean (Astin) is always away on business trips, even on Mother's Day. Who could blame him?
Allyson arranges a girls night out with her two friends where she promises to let her hair down and the gals wind up going bowling after their dinner plans go awry. Her best friend Izzy (White) just learned she is pregnant, while her other friend Sondra (Heaton) is a pastor's wife and forever trying to quell her daughter's rebellious streak. The men completely bungle their end of the bargain, leaving Sean with a dislocated shoulder and Izzy's spaz husband a complete mess. It will likely be a long, long time before these women can go out again.
Through plot developments entirely too ridiculous to recap, the girls and guys are soon looking for the child of Allyson's sister-in-law Bridgette (Cobb), who works at the bowling alley and discovers her ex isn't watching their child as expected. The girls ride around town in a taxi (don't ask) knocking on doors and visiting tattoo parlors searching for the child who is actually safe and sound in a neighbor's house. Everyone winds up in a police station where one of the women is accidentally shocked with a taser.
I am probably making this sound more entertaining than it is. Moms' Night Out is a mess of dead end scenes and missed comic opportunities. Scene after scene unravels before our eyes with no comic payoff. It lacks imagination and nerve. There is a reason for this and it took me four and a half paragraphs to reveal that Moms' Night Out is a faith-based movie. Because of this, everything that happens is tame and repressed. There are a couple of sermons inserted into the rare quiet moments the film offers. But it is an ungainly fit. The Christian angle seems like it was dropped in from another movie.
Do the filmmakers have so little faith in its intended Christian audience's ability to handle a little subversive behavior? Or some risqué humor? The movie holds back. It is afraid to offend anyone. It is difficult to make a comedy without pushing back against set boundaries. Except for a snooty restaurant maître-'d, everyone in Moms' Night Out is nice, sweet, and bland. Even when one of the characters reveals her "wild" past, she expresses her remorse over having a tattoo. Oh no! The horror. She regrets going to Woodstock '94. That is the extent of her past. The other characters don't seem to have ever done anything adventurous in their lives. The people in this movie are not allowed to be human or multi-dimensional. Everyone deserves better.
No comments:
Post a Comment