Jamie likes to plan “fun mom dinners” from time to time: “Lots of wine, no kids,” she promises perkily. When she and Melanie invite Emily to join them, Emily naturally invites along her longtime pal, Kate, even though she’s too cool for such joiner activities. Actually, Emily tricks Kate into coming, which makes things tense from the get-go.
But Jones and Rudd make the mistake of cutting that tension too quickly. It could have been a source of comic conflict for a while. Instead, the ladies quickly connect over way too many glasses of wine (and other substances) over a long night of barhopping. “Fun Mom Dinner” cuts back and forth between their adventures and the comparatively tame night their husbands—Andrew and Tom, specifically—are having as they watch the kids and bond in the backyard over stolen Halloween candy.
It all builds to nothing. There’s no momentum to either storyline. Emily briefly flirts with a scruffily handsome bar owner (Adam Levine), but it’s shocking how little chemistry they have and how lifeless their banter is. And at the point that’s meant to be the height of hilarity, the ladies jump in the water in a marina to chase a boat, led by Melanie in an over-sized unicorn onesie.
While such individual antics are lame, “Fun Mom Dinner” also makes the repeated mistake of banging us over the head with its running gags and needlessly spelling everything out, making the movie feel longer than its 81 minutes. It’s not enough to have the foursome giggle over vajazzling during their night out on the town; the ladies also describe this intimate art form in detail before gawking at (and showing us) a graphic Instagram photo of it. It’s not enough to have them ooh and ahh over the hunky Jake Ryan character in “Sixteen Candles” (because truly, who wouldn’t?); they also over-explain his allure, which should be clear to the viewers this movie is geared toward.
There’s the hackneyed scene when enemies Kate and Melanie break the ice with a few hits of pot from a vape pen. There’s the obligatory slow-motion swagger down the street to suggest the foursome’s bad-assery and bonding as a group. And you know the film is straining for laughs (and stretching the running time) when the ladies hop on stage to drunkenly destroy Nena’s “99 Luftballoons”—in German, no less.
These are indeed moms, and they do have dinner, but the “fun” part is in short supply.
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