Bad Moms (2016) * * *

Directed by: Jon Lucas and Scott Moore

Starring:  Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Christina Applegate, Jada Pinkett Smith, Annie Mumolo, David Walton, Clark Duke

I was happy to see Bad Moms defy my expectations and give us a raunchy comedy with a heart.   Well, truth be told, Bad Moms doesn't go heavy on the raunch, which makes it all the more satisfying.    Any comedy in which a party figures heavily into the plot is not one which gives me high hopes for success, but the movie wisely makes this a segment rather than the focus and that helps move the plot along.   

We meet Amy (Kunis), a harried mom of two ungrateful, spoiled kids who is trying in vain to be all things to all people.    She gets the kids ready for school, makes the lunches, drops them off at school, goes to PTA meetings, holds down a part-time job at an office in which she (at 32) is the oldest employee there, and then hurries to take her daughter to soccer practice.    She is married, but refers to her clueless husband as her third child.    He is too busy watching porn to actively partake in his family.    Amy is surely taken for granted, but one day she pushes back and forms a friendship with two other moms who are mad as hell and not going to take this anymore.

Her two new friends are Kiki (Bell), a frazzled mother of four and Carla (Hahn), an unapologetically foul-mouthed mom of one who is not opposed to sleeping with the husbands of other moms.    They throw responsibility to the wind and target their wrath at wealthy Gwendolyn (Applegate), the insufferable, spiteful, fascist PTA President on a permanent power trip.     Amy, tired of Gwendolyn's crap, decides to run against her for the PTA presidency, which in Bad Moms is apparently a big deal.  

Applegate is sufficiently hateful and mean, under a façade of properness and caring.   She is flanked by two flunkies (Smith and Mumolo), giving us a grown-up version of Mean Girls.    We root for their demise, which is a step in the right direction.    We feel sorry for Amy and Kiki, who are sweet, nice people who deserve to have a little fun.    A lot of the punch lines are reserved for Carla, who is profane and proud of it, but really loves her baseball-playing son even though she would rather do anything else but watch his games.

Bad Moms never strays over the line into bad taste or someone drinking bodily fluids.    When movies or TV shows resort to slow-motion displays of drinking and partying, I sense it is nothing but filler.    But, in Bad Moms, the party is a big swerve in Amy's favor in her election bid against Gwendolyn, so it serves a purpose.    And it doesn't last all that long.    Bad Moms isn't as inspired as better comedies like The Hangover (which Lucas and Moore co-wrote as well as this one) or Animal House, but it maintains its own effortless charm and even some sweetness in places you wouldn't expect.