A Bad Moms Christmas

I walked in on my wife watching this a year or two ago and saw about 2/3's of it. Enough to know it was amusing and be confident in ranking it, if not reviewing it. When trying to find a Christmas movie to watch, she suggested it, assuming I'd say no, and to her surprise, I said sure, it seemed fine enough, and now I can watch it in full. And I was wrong in my original assessment. It's better than amusing. It's charming and funny. I laughed quite a bit and smiled plenty. Is it a comedic masterpiece? No, but it doesn't have to be. It isn't trying to be. It's trying to be no more than what the title says, and I respect that. Do I wish the conflict didn't bubble to a head out of the blue and resolve itself even faster? Sure. Are the non-Mila Kunis moms (Kathryn Hahn and Kristen Bell) given less time to develop their story than Kunis? Yup. But when you have those three as modern moms who are tired of being perfect angels, who swear and drink and like to have sex and are, you know, HUMAN, and you have Susan Sarandon, Christine Baranski, and Cheryl Hines as THEIR moms driving them nuts for various reasons, and every actor is 100% committed, I'm good. I don't the movie to do more than have some funny scenes and, important for a Christmas movie, have some holiday sentiment. Yeah, the plot is a bit thin, but this is more about the relationships between mothers and daughters, and considering a mom I sit next to on the couch every night thinks it reflects those relationships pretty well, I'm gonna trust her judgment. Bad Moms Christmas hits the beats it needs to hit, and does them well enough to keep me entertained. Sometimes, that's enough.