Metacritic reviews

Beneath all of its hard-R partying, rebellious debauchery, and profanity, it taps into something very real and insidious in the zeitgeist. It’s one of the funniest movies of the year—and one of the most necessary.

The message of Bad Moms is that being a mother today is impossible... But it’s a hammer brought down with a light, goofy touch (maybe too light; the male characters could use some punching-up), with a gleefully charming central trio that I enjoyed hanging out with.

For the film to be about more than just wildly outrageous behavior (although those moments are the one that provoke the biggest and well-earned laughs), these have to feel like real people and we have to care about them too. And we do, thanks to a strong cast of comic actresses who have an easy chemistry with each other.

Bad Moms could easily skate along only on its very funny, often very raunchy jokes, but it also makes a much-needed argument for the difficulties of modern motherhood and how the pressure to be perfect is damaging both mothers and their kids.

Jokes about anal sex and cameos by the likes of Martha Stewart and Wanda Sykes help or hinder as the case may be, but know that your level of enjoyment is directly proportional to how many drinks you’ve had. My advice: Make it a double.

Although it often stumbles in service to delivering yet another foul-mouthed joke, its heart remains firmly in the right place.

There aren’t too many weird or original moments in Bad Moms...but Lucas and Moore, who wrote the script for The Hangover, know how to clear the stage for talented performers that can spin gold from next to nothing.

The performers do sell a lot of this material. Bell is especially funny as a cheery, lonely mom whose litany of childcare responsibilities has cut her off from the rest of the world.

An over-reach for a “Hangover” styled spin on motherhood, with drugs, sex, booze and “experiment,” it reaches raucous on occasion. There are laughs, a disproportionate number of them coming from the trained comic in the cast, Kathryn Hahn.

It’s not the moms that are bad — it’s the movie.