“A Bad Moms Christmas”

*

(R, 1:44)

In “A Bad Moms Christmas,” it’s double the moms, double the bad.

Last time around, a year and change ago, the “Bad Moms” were just a trio of Wine Moms — Amy (Mila Kunis), Kiki (Kristen Bell) and Carla (Kathryn Hahn) — letting loose with some shots while letting go of perfectionism.

Now their moms — Ruth (Christine Baranski), Sandy (Cheryl Hines) and Isis (Susan Sarandon) — are in town for the holidays, and we’ve got a veritable cornucopia of naughty mommies.

“Bad Moms”: now with more emotional manipulation.

The existential plight of the Wine Mom — who seeks relief from the crushing weight of heteronormative capitalist patriarchy at the bottom of a chardonnay bottle — is a real cultural crisis. Someone should shine a light on this, but co-writers and co-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore are not those storytellers. Mostly because one has to wonder if Lucas and Moore have ever even met human women. These characters are cartoonish campy drag personae of women.

The original “Bad Moms” seemed to spring from a single inspirational scene, with the rest of the movie written around it (moms going crazy at a house party), and “A Bad Moms Christmas” takes the same approach. So when the “twerking on Santa” sequence is over within the first 10 minutes, the film is adrift, filled with so much tedious male stripper filler material. It’s the “Bad Moms” Meet “Magic Mike” Holiday Extravaganza, only with truly ghastly dancing. Bravely straining to hold things together are the emphatic line deliveries, made to trick us into thinking lines that are not jokes are, actually, jokes. Endless slow-motion montages of mayhem, set to pop tunes, are also intended to pass as humor.

There’s some decent acting. Baranski is wonderfully sharp as the monstrous Type A 1-percenter Ruth, and she does get a few amazing lines (“those ornaments are from the Titanic! That ice is from the moon! Moon ice!” she shrieks, as she and her daughter symbolically tussle over a Christmas tree). Hines is also delightfully surreal as the overprotective Sandy.

What’s offensive about “A Bad Moms Christmas” (and “Bad Moms”) is just how shoddily made it is. It positions the enemies of moms as other moms — not the rigidly gendered social structures and expectations that demand women do the majority of the domestic and emotional labor. Rather than men or money being the enemy, it’s other women, and that’s not fair. Here’s to hoping for “A Bad Moms Revolution” as the final installment.