Bad for Christmas

It's a time of year that movie fans are catching up on things they missed in earlier months. Two major new releases just arrived on two different streaming services, and I have hot takes to share! (Maybe "hot." You don't know.)

But then also, if you're at all like me, the window on wanting to watch Christmas movies begin to shut -- rapidly -- on the day itself, and has closed altogether by New Year's Eve. So I'm going to sit on my thoughts on Soul and Wonder Woman 1984 for the moment, and instead lead with: I recently watched the holiday-themed sequel to Bad Moms: A Bad Moms Christmas. And if you're looking for a bit of light fluff in the last week of 2020, you could do worse.

I didn't give a glowing review to the original Bad Moms, but one thing it did have going for it was a great comic trio in Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn. The plot was thin and the tone was less raunchy than I'd expected, but when the jokes did come, those three leads made them funny. I was interested to see them return for another go, and my hope was that more accurate expectations for the tone would make a sequel more enjoyable.

I was right about that. Once again, the plot is tissue thin. The sentimental elements aren't folded in very well with the comedic elements. But the jokes do land. The raunchiness is actually dialed up a bit from the first movie. And once again, that core trio of Kunis, Bell, and Hahn is rock solid -- though Bell does feel a bit shunted to the margins this time around.

The gimmick of this story is that the "bad moms" have their own moms coming for Christmas... and that's an opportunity to expand the cast to wonderful effect. This movie brings in Susan Sarandon, Christine Baranski, and Cheryl Hines, and they really steal the show. Each of the three gets truly funny material, and they all seem here to cut loose and play in a fun way. By the end of the movie, I couldn't help but feel like I was ready to watch the "Bad Grandmas" sequel spin-off starring those three.

For sure, don't set your hopes too high. This movie is no instant holiday classic you're likely to want to watch year after year. But it's better than the original film, has its share of laughs, and is a light and breezy distraction in serious times. I'd say it's worth watching (whether you saw the first Bad Moms or not; it's hardly necessary) -- a pretty solid B.

If it's too late for Christmas movies for you, I get it. Maybe throw it in the queue to come back to next year. Hopefully by then, the idea of company crashing your house for the December holidays won't seem quite so alien and dangerous to us all.