Film Review: A Bad Moms Christmas

"We're Gonna Put The Ass Back In Christmas..!"

Although American based comedies tend more than most to fall on the side of face-palm induced awfulness, with the likes of The House, CHiPs and the horror of Table 19 from this year alone proving such a genre is rife with utter, utter trash, last year's Bad Moms was a release of which I personally was pleasantly surprised by, a movie which although suffered from a dwindling lack of originality, featured enough charming characters and sharp one-liners to pass off as one of the better comedies to come from the US of A, particularly in the past few years or so. Whilst the success of the original by no means meant that a sequel was warranted, as per the norm of every single reasonably well received movie in Hollywood nowadays, here we are with A Bad Moms Christmas, a movie which takes the formula of its' predecessor and mixes in the saccharin filled notion of everyone's favourite holiday, a seasonal delight which either leads to cinematic classics such as It's A Wonderful Life or vomit-inducing crap such as Jack Frost. Eugh. Whilst it is no surprise that A Bad Moms Christmas is nowhere near the passable fun of its' predecessor, with the guilty pleasure appeal of the first movie somewhat absent a second time around, there is still enough smart gags and overripe new characters to allow the sequel to warrant its' existence. Sort of. 

With Christmas around the corner and the unexpected arrival of their respective parents on the cards, the leading trio of the original return once again to "take back Christmas" in a manner which begins by bearing huge similarities to its' predecessor with excess drinking, low-level criminality and drunk dancing with Santa, one which subsequently flows into a Meet the Parents type comedy which focuses on each of our leading ladies' troublesome mother figures. With Mila Kunis once again having enough charming eloquence to take control of the main bulk of the film and Kathryn Hahn's Carla always guaranteed to make the most cynical of audiences giggle in places, A Bad Moms Christmas undeniably belongs to the domineering presence of Christine Baranski as Ruth Mitchell, a maternal devil figure who is both bitchy and comedic in equal measure with Baranski's performance being one of the main reasons why the sequel does indeed work on some level. With the gross factor turned up however and the annoying overuse of obscenity rife from beginning to end, A Bad Moms Christmas is not exactly the sequel to carry on the successes of the first but for ninety odd minutes, it passes the time rather harmlessly. 

Overall Score: 5/10

Film Review: The Visit

The Elder House Rules

A bit late I know for a review of The Visit, M. Night Shyamalan's return to the land of movie-making, but due to an all work and no play way of life at the moment, a trip to the cinema now feels more like a holiday instead of a bi-daily occurrence of which it once did. When before if I ever missed the pit-stop of being on-time with reviews of the week's movies I would simply move on and allow better, and much more educated, viewpoints to have their say without my own personal feelings on the matter surfacing onto the web, yet the release of The Visit put me in such a deep coma of confusion that I felt compelled to relay my own opinions onto you wonderful people who take the time to read my sometimes bloated, yet wholly organic take on the week's new movies. Whereas in the past director M. Night Shyamalan was lauded for critically acclaimed movies such as The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, his recent performances have been somewhat pants with straight-down-the-toilet releases such as After Earth and The Last Airbender tainting his reputation two-fold resulting in his return in the form of The Visit, a film so confused by its' own creation that it seemingly crosses between the boundaries of horror and comedy in such stark fashion that it fails to distinguish itself as nothing more than a movie that's smothered in marmite, and feels happy to be so.

Produced and released by those behind the downfall of horror cinema as we know it at Blumhouse Productions, The Visit attempts to distinguish itself from the annoyingly overused theme of found-footage by establishing itself as a pseudo-documentary, focusing on the reunion of both grandchildren and grandparents, whilst forming an overly confusing combination of cliched horror tropes, of which, are not very frightening, and black comedy, of which, isn't very funny, with crude toilet humour and the image of a naked elderly woman being the highlight of the film's comedic standpoint. With a supposed "twist" being not only a complete and utter let-down, but being seen from a mile off, it begs the question whether Shyamalan will ever return to the high watermark set at the early beginnings of his once promising career. The Visit isn't on the level of After Earth at least, but it's miles off the brilliance of The Sixth Sense and can only be regarded as a movie lost in its' own attempt to be both funny and scary but ends up not being entirely either.

Overall Score: 4/10