Mila Kunis is a mess in the trailer for “Bad Moms.” She’s late to marketing meetings, spills lunch all over her suit and gets mildly sweaty in an exercise class full of women in pink sports bras. You know, the average pitfalls of motherhood.
And yet, her “mess” is still a remarkably attractive one: full makeup, coiffed curls, high-end clothing, a clean and beautiful home. She’s a nightmare dressed like a daydream, as they say.
Who exactly decided that 32-year-old Kunis, consistent member of every iteration of the sexiest women alive list, was right for this part? What casting director thought that it would be believable to have a famously gorgeous actress play an unlucky-in-love, flirting-incompetent mother? She may be a bad mom, but she looks so good doing it.
I can’t tell which is worse—that we’re already giving bored middle-aged mom roles to the Mila Kunises of the world, or that the actual middle-aged actresses are being shafted in favor of younger, hotter starlets.
It’s easy to point out that casting a young, beautiful actress in a midlife crisis-esque motherhood role is simply standard Hollywood practice. There’s no denying that’s the case. I’m also not saying that there aren’t plenty of 32-year-old women raising middle-school-aged children out there, or that the stories of young mothers should be excluded from this kind of narrative.
But something tells me Kunis wasn’t cast to explore those themes, or for any kind of deeper commentary on the difficulties of raising kids as a young adult. Instead, she’s a suitably wrinkle-free and recognizable face that will do well at the box office.
And that factor is representative of bigger problems within the Hollywood casting machine. Has Kunis already begun to age out of rom-com roles? How many years does she have left before she’s supposed to be the mom of college-age kids? Dear God, what’s going to happen when she hits 40?
This is a movie that’s supposed to be made for moms, and it’s true that it’s just a silly comedy. Still, I look at teeny-tiny Mila Kunis, ridiculously out of place in a dowdy “mom bra,” and I cringe.
I think of my own mother—who also raised preteen children while juggling a full-time job, and had to sacrifice so much of herself because of it—and I see so very little of her experience reflected in this film.
I can’t help but feel like that’s a bit of an injustice.
@EmmaKrupp1 | ekrupp@chicagotribune.com
