This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Lord Knows I'm Drinking
Plot Overview
The opening sounds like testimony time at an AA meeting as a voice-over announces, “I'm Amy Mitchell and I'm a mom. I had my first kid when I was twenty and I've been running late ever since. … At least once a day I feel like the worst mom in the world. … I work at a specialty hip coffee company. I'm 32, the oldest one there. … I live just outside of Chicago with two kids, a dog, and my husband Mike (who's like a third kid.)” We then see a documentary of her day-to-day life where she's overworked, underappreciated, and reconciled to taking it all in stride.
When Amy (Mila Kunis) discovers her man-child husband Mike (David Walton) engaged in a vulgar on-line activity, she kicks him out of the house. Although he's been doing little to help her, now without even that little help, she's running late, and she arrives last at a PTA meeting with no place to sit. PTA president Gwendolyn James (Christina Applegate) has just asked for volunteers to be the bake sale police, to check the goodies for verboten ingredients. Amy snaps and uncharacteristically says, “No … I can't do this any more. I'm done. I quit.”
We then see another side of her at a bar, sipping scotch, teaming up with two other disaffected women: stay-at-home Kiki (Kristen Bell) and foul mouth Carla (Kathryn Hahn). They have become “bad moms.” Watch out, world.
Ideology
Amy's history with Mike is, “I got pregnant; we got married.” Too much physical intimacy before marriage can lead to a less than ideal mate selection as anthropologist Desmond Morris writes: (247)
The [sexual] preliminaries provide time for careful judgments to be made, judgments
that may be hard to form once the massive, shared emotional impact of double orgasm
has been experienced. This powerful moment can act as such a tight ‘bonder’ that it
may well tie together two people quite unsuited to each other, if they have not spent
sufficient time exploring each other's personalities during the sexual preliminaries.
Mike's sex obsession was a downward trend, leading their therapist Dr. Karl (Wanda Sykes) to (2Cor. 12:21) “bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed.” Mike went from unclean porn sites to lasciviousness on-line relations to fornication “staying with his Internet girlfriend.” Dr. Karl as a therapist is not allowed to tell them what do to, but personally she “thinks you should get divorced as soon as possible. This is some catastrophic shit.” They were pretty unevenly matched.
With that background we pick up her story at a bar, similar to the one of a backslidden Christian I remember being introduced without any background in the country song: “Lord Knows I'm Drinking.”
Hello, Mrs Johnson, you self righteous woman,
Sunday School teacher what brings you out slummin'?
Do you reckon the preacher would approve where you are
Standing here visitin' with a back slidin' Christian in a
neighborhood bar
Well, yes that's my bottle and yes, that's my glass,
And I see you're eye ballin' this pretty young lass.
It ain't none of your business but yes, she's with me,
And we don't need no sermon you self righteous woman
just let us be.
The Lord knows I'm drinking and running around,
And he don't need your loud mouth informing the town.
The Lord knows I'm sinning and sinning ain't right,
But me and the good Lord gonna have us a good talk later
tonight.
Goodbye, Mrs. Johnson, you self righteous biddy.
I don't need your preachin' and I don't need your pity.
So go back to whatever you hypocrites do,
And when I talk to heaven be nice and I'll put in a good
word for you.
The Lord knows I'm drinking ...
Amy was drinking & running around, and yes, handsome, widowed father Jessie Harkness (Jay Hernandez) was with her. Leave it up to self-righteous Gwendolyn to seed the community with rumors and innuendo. But at the day's end, Amy is going to make a clean breast of it, and she may even think kindly of her tormentor. This is similar to what one monk calls “the scene of two men who go to the temple to pray, and of whom one of them is justified on account of his humility and true contrition. The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:10-14)” (110–11)
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
Production Values
This movie, “” (2016) was written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. It stars Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, Kathryn Hahn, Christina Applegate & Jada Pinkett Smith. The three main cast members Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn exhibited wonderful chemistry together, and the rest of the cast complemented them nicely and contributed humor, as well. Of note was the cameo of Martha Stewart.
MPAA rated it R for sexual material, full frontal nudity, language throughout, and drug & alcohol content. There were a lot of lively songs, some of them accompanying some road action. The end credits feature live interviews with the stars and their moms … quite touching.
Review Conclusion w/ Christian Recommendation
“Bad Moms” milks the mime of the disaffected housewife/working-mom for all it's worth. This film is pretty much one-dimensional that way, but since the women were cute and/or funny no one seemed to mind very much. Just go with the flow and be entertained.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Special effects: Average special effects. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall product rating: three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
A Monk of the Eastern Church, Translated from the French by Deborah Cohen. The Year of Grace of the Lord. A scriptural and liturgical commentary on the calendar of the Orthodox Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1980. Previously published in French in two volumes under the title L'an de Grace du Seigneur. Print.
Bill Anderson, “Lord Knows I'm Drinking”. '72 Stallion Music. WEB.
Morris, Desmond. Manwatching. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org