Christian cinema continues its move into the mainstream in a crucial way with Moms’ Night Out. Whereas recent faith films like God’s Not Dead and Heaven Is for Real have been dramas, this one is a flat-out comedy. As such, the requisite message is delivered with a much softer touch. One character’s husband is a pastor, which allows for a scene set in church as he preaches his sermon, and another gives a religion-tinged, but entirely relevant, speech near the end. And that’s about it. While it’s encouraging to see an entry in the genre attempt to blend its ideals in a way that’s a little more organic, the truth is that everything else about the picture is as blunt as jackhammer.
Sarah Drew plays Allyson, a “mommy blogger” who is overwhelmed by the demands of caring for several children, despite the fact that her husband Sean (Sean Astin) is fully supportive. In desperate need of a break, she organizes a night out for herself and two other harried moms, Izzy (Andrea Logan White) and Sondra (Patricia Heaton). The evening turns out to be anything but relaxing. A mixed-up dinner reservation is merely the least of their problems. Because Allyson isn’t available to babysit, Sean’s sister Bridget (Abbie Cobb) leaves her infant son in the care of her ex-boyfriend while she works. When the moms run into the guy while out on the town, it sets off a frantic search to locate the child, who is haphazardly being passed around from caregiver to caregiver. They eventually get help from the proprietor of a local tattoo parlor (played by that paragon of comedy, country singer Trace Adkins). Meanwhile, Sean and the other daddies deal with complications of their own, including an errant bird and a “stolen” minivan.
Moms’ Night Out is the kind of comedy that mistakes incessant wackiness for actual wit. The actors have apparently been instructed to play the material as broadly as possible. They all give performances that contain an excess of shouting, mugging, and arm-flailing. There’s barely a subtle moment anywhere. Patricia Heaton comes off best, earning what few chuckles there are to be found. Heaton’s years on Everybody Loves Raymond allowed her to perfect her crack sitcom timing, and since Moms’ Night Out is essentially a 98-minute sitcom, she seems the most at home. The screenplay does no one any real favors, though. Every situation the characters find themselves in is so unrepentantly goofy that the only way for the story to carry on is for all of them to act like complete idiots. If anyone here had a brain, the film would be over immediately. At every turn, they do the exact thing common sense should tell them not to do. Audience members with even a modicum of logic may find themselves frustrated by the forced nature of their behavior.
This continual straining for wackiness extends to the filmmaking itself. Directors Andrew and Jon Erwin (October Baby) frequently freeze the image to allow Allyson to explain in voiceover what she’s thinking and clutter the screen with graphics whenever she blogs or someone texts. From time to time, cartoony images pop up to drive home some joke that isn’t funny to begin with. An intrusively jaunty musical score can be heard throughout, as though cueing you to laugh. The Erwins even resort to a couple of creaky clichés. When Allyson and the ladies first hit the town, there’s a slow-motion shot of them walking in unison. Even more eyeroll-inducing is the wacky montage of all the characters dancing over the end credits.
The surprisingly best thing about Moms’ Night Out is its Christian message, which is handled in a sensitive, down-to-earth manner. Rather than forcing an out-of-nowhere miracle into the third act (as God’s Not Dead did), the movie opts for something much more identifiable: a nice conversation between two characters that ultimately reveals the true theme. Many mothers, Moms’ Night Out suggests, rely on their faith to help them deal with day-to-day parenting issues; that same faith inspires them to be the best mothers they can be to their children. It’s a beautiful, touching, truthful idea that deserves so much better than this generally obnoxious, unfunny movie.
Real quick: 87% of normal people from all walks of life liked and recommend this movie. Only 14% of so called “movie critics” and worse yet only 7% of so called “top movie critics”. Shows how out of touch you all are. It seems the more one moves up the movie critic “ranking” to become a “top” movie critic, the more out of touch and deranged one becomes.
Care to provide sources for this ridiculous claim?
Rotten Tomatoes. It is 88% now out of 12,019 people.
I always feel compelled to comment whenever someone hauls out this dusty old argument. I don’t care what audiences like or dislike. My job is not to assess audience taste. (That’s what box office receipts do.) My job is to provide an informed opinion about the quality of the filmmaking and to detail my own personal reaction, which is what I did. If other people like “Moms’ Night Out” more than I did, great. But our concern here is providing an interesting/informative/entertaining commentary on each movie we review, not to make sure we match up to what the public may or may not like.
True enough; however, when your view is so opposed to general target audiences, perhaps you should ask yourself whether personal biases are getting in the way. I generally liked the movie, although some of it was a bit “bland” for audiences conditioned to gross-out & scatological humor. Accordingly, the “goofiness” was ramped up to substitute for the easy-laugh, obvious R-rated gags seen in movies such as The Hangover trilogy, Bad Words, etc. (would you criticize them for being “too raunchy” or “too profane” when those characteristics appeal to their target audience?). Yes, MNO is average (at least you didn’t get shrill like so many other “top critics” who savaged the movie because it didn’t send the message THEY want to see (namely, stay-at-home moms are slaves)…one even calling the movie not just “regressive” but also “borderline dangerous.” LOL I simply have to wonder if a Christian reviewer raked Bad Words over the coals for being too profane (in addition to being unfunny, uneven, and one-note jokeish) if you would accuse that reviewer of allowing his/her biases to get in the way of objective reviewing. Mom’s Night Out isn’t The Philadelphia Story…but it isn’t dreck, either.