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Kristen Bell, from left, Mila Kunis and Kathryn Hahn in "Bad Moms."
Michele K. Short / TNS
Kristen Bell, from left, Mila Kunis and Kathryn Hahn in “Bad Moms.”
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“Bad Moms” is mommy porn, but not in the “50 Shades of Grey” way. It’s 101 minutes of escapism that suggests you could leave your dope husband, tell off your boss, take down that PTA bitch, find a hot new boyfriend to spoil you, do less for your kids and … everything would work out great. Add in the fact that it’s frequently and genuinely funny—no, really—and you have a movie that should have moms all over America lining up. With lines like “Moms don’t quit! Quitting is for dads!” how could it not?

“I’m so tired of trying to be this perfect mom,” Amy (Mila Kunis) says during a PTA meeting after a particularly long day of juggling work and shuttling her kids around. “I’m done.” And so she quits, embarking with her pals—raunchy single mom Carla (Kathryn Hahn, serving as the Melissa McCarthy type) and spacey stay-at-home mom Kiki (Kristen Bell)—on a quest to do less.

Weirdly, it’s just that simple. After a night of drinking, Amy wakes up hungover and tells her kids to make breakfast for themselves. She takes the morning off of work to go eat brunch and read the newspaper on an outdoor patio. Amy can afford to be a “bad mom” without worrying about making her mortgage payments.

The biggest problem with “Bad Moms” is that the whole thing watches like a wish-fulfillment fantasy, devoid of the messiness that makes motherhood truly challenging. As the child of a do-it-all working mom, it’s infuriating to watch Mila Kunis breeze through scene after scene with perfect hair and makeup whining about how hard it is to be a mother. She never even looks tired, let alone frizzy and foundation-free!

So much of the movie is simplistic to the point of ignoring reality. Amy’s husband is a cheater and an idiot, making it easy to dispose of him quickly and painlessly (although he offers the too-real line, “I haven’t cried since the Cubbies lost it all in ’03”). The girls take Amy out to get laid, and after we’re subjected to a lot of “Who me?” ridiculousness (as if a woman in Mila Kunis’ body would ever expect a breathing man to turn her down), she hooks up with the “hot widower” from her kids’ school. He says things like “Can I go down on you again?” after they’ve had sex, so he definitely seems like a real person.

“Bad Moms” isn’t interested in the darker trials of motherhood. It would rather give moms what they want—like a spa day in movie form. Is wish fulfillment a bad thing? Maybe I’d like a movie to do justice to the crap my mother went through, but perhaps she’d just prefer a break from that reality.

2.5 stars (out of four)

@lchval | laurenchval@redeyechicago.com