Post by StevePulaski on Sept 4, 2014 0:18:15 GMT -5
Moms' Night Out (2014)
Directed by: Jon and Andrew Erwin
Directed by: Jon and Andrew Erwin
From left: Andrea Logan White, Sarah Drew, Patricia Heaton, and Sammi Hanratty are the moms in Moms' Night Out.
Rating: ★½
Jon and Andrew Erwin's Moms' Night Out means ever-so well, and just wants to function as an innocuous piece of Christian-based, family-friendly entertainment, which makes it hard to call it out for being one of the most ridiculous and boring films of 2014 thus far. In addition, it makes me feel even more bad about talking so derogatorily about a film that means well thematically, but tacks on its message so haphazardly and in the middle of such indescribable raucous that it would be like The Hangover films breaking their streak of raunchiness and bawdy humor to address the serious problem of alcohol-induced blackouts that plague America today.
To put it simply and effectively, Moms' Night Out is a lackluster example of Christian filmmaking; a faith-based attempt at recreating the debauchery and the no-rules comedy of the aforementioned Hangover films but tuning down all the naughtiness and the dirty-words for the sensitive. It's a film that is so messy and so desperately unfunny that the only laughs it'll likely obtain are from wholesome family, desperate for something outside of the secular entertainment that airs on the basic cable networks during primetime. If that's what you're looking for, Moms' Night Out will do little else other than provide you with some disposable, slapstick entertainment for one-hundred and thirty-nine minutes.
The film revolves around Allyson (Sarah Drew), an over-worked, stay-at-home mom, with three kids referring to her by that name. She tries to schedule a day out with her girlfriends, fellow moms Izzy (Andrea Logan White) and Sondra (Patricia Heaton), but is always met with a continuously overloaded schedule, and her husband, Sean (Sean Astin), always seems to be away on business. One day, Allyson finally finds the time to go out with the ones close to her, one Saturday evening where her and her two friends will eat at an expensive restaurant and unwind accordingly. As you can expect, the night gets off on the wrong foot, no pun intended, as Allyson realizes she cannot walk in heels and learns her reservation for three at the expensive restaurant was made for the wrong Saturday.
And now, it's apparent that Allyson's sister-in-law Bridget (Abbie Cobb) has just lost her infant son and is running around crazy in search of her. She wisely left him with the tough-guy tattoo artist downtown, who goes by the name of "Bones" (country music singer Trace Adkins), but now has lost track of her, leaving Allyson and company to track down the infant. While this is occurring, Sean's agreement to watch the three kids of theirs with a close friend of his turns into nothing but regret as he struggles to manage the rugrats.
For starters, much has been made about Moms' Night Out's apparent sexism and judgments about stay at home mothers, with people making the accusation that none of these incidents would've happened to the mothers if they had just stayed home and not made the decision to go out. Clearly, women belong in the home, where they are safe, as men cannot handle the task of watching children, so people have claimed. I don't see as much of an argument for the offended there when I take a simple look at the caricatures the mothers are in the film, rather than developed personalities with their own feelings. If there is any sexism in the film - which I, admittedly, struggle to find - it's that the mothers aren't given their respective dues as characters in the film.
The best performance in the film is that of Trace Adkins, as the gravelly-voiced, tough-guy biker, who arrives in the knick-of-time to certain sticky situations. Adkins, himself, is fun to watch, and is a pleasant diversion from the simplistic and thin characters the mothers are shortchanged as, and he makes great use of his stereotypical personality all the more. Having said that, Moms' Night Out isn't as preachy or as heavy-handed as other Christian films like God's Not Dead and Heaven is for Real have been. Give the film credit as it doesn't so much as try to champion Christianity and make its teachings the only way one could ever live a great life, but writers Jon Erwin and Andrea Gyertson Nasfell do try and play the technology card a bit too much in the film. For example, there is repeated use of technology, such as texting and blogging, as if the Erwin brothers are amazed Christians could actually use technology. While the film could take this opportunity of communication to new heights, it settles for jokes involving a mother being victim to the auto-correct on her phone, leading to some of the least funny scenes of this year.
The Erwin brothers were responsible for 2012's October Baby, a well-made, but ultimately, flat and highly questionable story about a woman learning she was adopted after nearly ending up an aborted fetus before going on a search for her biological mother. Neither that film or Moms' Night Out are so openly Christian and boastful in their faith that they are distracting, but both films find ways to be distracting through their lackluster abilities to create situations and characters. Moms' Night Out, at its core, is another piece of what I call "maximum antics, minimum laughter," meaning there are numerous instances of situational comedy in the film but few amount to humor.
If you're really going to look at the contemporary Christian film section for your night's worth of entertainment, at least turn your head towards Flywheel or Courageous, films made by Alex Kendrick (one of the actors in this particular film) and his brother under their church's name. Look for God's Not Dead, the thoroughly-contemplative Christian drama that took the box office by surprise, or the seldom-seen King's Faith, which handles the idea of gangs and negative reinforcements with Christian themes. The genre is already so messy and cluttered with abysmal drivel - now is not the time to waste on poorly-conceived films like Moms' Night Out. Whether you're confined to the soap-opera drama of Tyler Perry's Single Moms Club or the comedic drudgery of Moms' Night Out, needless to say, it has been a pretty mediocre year for mothers being represented in film.
Starring: Sarah Drew, Patricia Heaton, Andrew Logan White, Abbie Cobb, Sean Astin, and Trace Adkins. Directed by: Jon and Andrew Erwin.