Moviefone Editorial

Tag: kathryn-hahn

  • ‘Bad Moms’ Stars Get Real About Motherhood Under the Microscope

    BAD MOMS stars Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn HahnThe role of motherhood as portrayed in film and television has often taken either a saintly approach (“The Donna Reed Show,” June Cleaver in “Leave It to Beaver”) or one so horrible that it terrifies you for years to come (“Mommy Dearest,” and “Psycho”). Neither are completely accurate, and neither truly resemble what moms go through on a day-to-day basis. “Bad Moms,” the new comedy written by “The Hangover” duo Scott Moore and Jon Lucas, tries to not only poke a little fun at the “mommy war” lens so popular on social media, but also offer a hilarious, slightly offbeat look into what real moms go through.

    We sat down with the leading ladies of “Bad Moms,” Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn, to talk about their feelings on having men write the script, navigating motherhood in Hollywood, and getting cool points with their kids for knowing Princess Anna.

    Moviefone: I’m a mom of an eight-year-old girl, so I related to so much of the movie. But, let me ask you something: What were your reactions when you first read the script and saw that it was written by two men?

    Mila Kunis: The first time I read the script I was not aware that it was written by two men. I read it and I was thought, What a great movie, this should be done and I’m so excited this is going to happen. Then I flipped to the front cover to see who had written it. I looked at it and I thought Oh, wow! Not at all what I expected. Let alone the guys who wrote “The Hangover,” where you’re thinking I can’t believe these two movies live in the same human’s brain, but you meet them and they’re so wonderful and so smart and so kind. They so wrote this as a love letter to their wives because they have these amazing, wonderful partners in life that help with their kids and they interviewed hundreds of women to get the story together. It ended up making sense once you get to know them. In the beginning, I was a little shocked.

    Kristen Bell: I thought it was a great example of defying all obstacles. I’m all for promoting women in the workplace and diversity, because different perspectives are very, very important. But I also think its okay to acknowledge when two men do a brilliant job of telling a female’s story. That should be acknowledged; they actually were uniquely observant and took our feedback as moms and they were open and not ego-driven at all during the process. They wanted to learn and I think that’s why they made such a great script.

    Mentioning that, was there a key moment when you guys actually went back and said, “No, a mom would not do this,” or “I would definitely not do this … my character wouldn’t do this”?

    Kathryn Hahn: No … for me at least, there was no … it’s such an escape, the movie, it feels like such an awesome, fun, wish fulfillment, that all of it felt like “Oh wouldn’t that be … ” so nothing felt unrealistic because it all felt like something that was a dream. It just felt so fun.

    That being said, there’s a lot of stories to be told about motherhood. Are there any stories that you would want to tell about motherhood yourselves?

    Mila Kunis: I’ve got a long way to go before I tell a story. Ask my mom, she’d have better ones. I think I have been a mom for too little time.

    Kristen Bell: I think this one is a really important story: I think having become a mom I have so much respect for my mom now because I think the hardest thing to do on planet Earth is to birth, nurture, and care for a child then release it into the world and reaccept it as an adult. I think that’s probably the hardest thing on the planet; I think it’s the hardest thing I’ll ever do; I know it’s the hardest thing my mom has ever done, and I think that’s maybe a story worth telling.

    Kathryn Hahn: Any time a woman’s story is told as complicated and rich and full as they deserve to be told, I’m all for. So a period of a woman’s life when she’s a mother is an enormous period that is also complicated and messy and beautiful and hilarious and painful and all of it in one. So yes, I think there are many more stories.

    I have to give you props as mothers. As women, you’ve navigated Hollywood so wonderfully. But I want to know, how does it affect you? Because, as moms, we’re already under a microscope. You guys have got to be under an even heavier microscope. Does that change how you perceive going out to work, or how you parent?

    Kathryn Hahn: They handle it so well, these two.

    Mila Kunis: It doesn’t change the way I parent, because, at the end of the day, my number one priority is raising a good human being. But I will say, yes, there are times when I can’t always go to the park with my kid. There’s that issue, but only for her safety, not for anything else. Other than that, I will never sacrifice my ability to raise her as a decent person due to my concerns about what other people think.

    Kristen Bell: My specific take is that I think I realized a few years ago that I was the one holding the microscope and that if I just put the microscope down it was so freeing because, in truth, my healthiest place is “I don’t care if you judge me because as long as I’m comfortable with my actions and I’m doing estimable acts in my life then I will have self-confidence and self-esteem.” So it was an epiphany for me when I realized I was the one allowing the microscope to exist and once I put that down it felt liberating.

    So Mila and Kathryn, have you earned any cool points with your kids now that you know Princess Anna?

    Mila Kunis: Mine has the attention span of a gnat. She’s only 21 months old, so she hasn’t been able to sit through … “Peppa Pig” is the only thing she sits through because it spans seven minutes. But boy, let me tell you, when she watches “Frozen,” I’m going to be like “That’s mama’s friend.” Not only that, but it’s no doubt, it’s the coolest thing, [Kristen] came over for a birthday party, we were swimming, and my girlfriend had her seven-year-old there. I cannot express to you what happens to these kids when they figure out that this is the real-life Princess Anna. It’s like a different existence occurs … the seven-year-old almost started crying …

    Kathryn Hahn: Beatles nothing!

    Mila Kunis: Nothing. Kristen Bell walks in and they’re like “Uhhhhh” — it’s just this other … I can’t explain it. Mine is too little, but I’ve seen it happen firsthand, and it is wonderful and I can’t wait to abuse this friendship.

    Can you talk a little bit about what’s going on with “Frozen 2,” or do you not know yet?

    Kristen Bell: I wish I knew. I know that they are taking a very long and diligent and specific time to write the script — to get it right — because this team is so committed to having the script be valuable and a story that needs to be told. They’re not settling, so we haven’t actually seen the script yet.

    Mila Kunis: That’s exciting!

    “Bad Moms” opens on July 29th.

  • Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell Are Mothers Gone Wild in ‘Bad Moms’ Trailer

    Bad MomsMoms just wanna have fun, too.

    The first red-band trailer for “Bad Moms” shows what happens when a trio of mothers decides to let their hair down, hold a shot of whiskey up, and throw the gluten-free, nut-free, sugar-free cookies out the window.

    Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell, and Kathryn Hahn star as stressed-out, under-appreciated moms who decide to stop trying to be so perfect all the time. This puts them in direct conflict with the put-together, uptight types at their school’s PTA, like Christina Applegate, who is determined to rule over the bake sale.Everybody in the cast is so likable, and watching Kunis and Bell deploy their talents at physical comedy in the same film is a dream.'Bad Moms' (2016) Red Band Trailer

    There’s some raunchy humor, too, involving some body parts getting folded. NSFW! Annie Mumolo and Jada Pinkett Smith also star.

    “Bad Moms” opens in theaters July 29.

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  • What’s Behind the Crazy Box Office Success of ‘The Perfect Guy’ and ‘The Visit’?

    The fall box office season wasn’t supposed to kick into gear until next week. No one expected much from either “The Visit” or “The Perfect Guy,” two low-budget films with little or no star power that opened this weekend. Maybe both films would open around $17 or $18 million, with a slight edge going to M. Night Shyamalan‘s horror movie “The Visit” because it was opening on 850 more screens than its rival.

    Instead, both movies opened big — about $10 million above expectations. And romance/thriller “The Perfect Guy” edged out “The Visit” by about $1 million, with estimates placing its debut at $26.7 million to “The Visit’s” $25.7 million. After several weeks of dog-days doldrums at the box office, we finally have a real surge in sales at the multiplex.

    What happened? How were the pundits all caught off guard? Here are some possible answers.

    African-American Audiences Are Underserved

    This should be obvious, and yet it’s not. It’s well-known that black viewers don’t see their experience reflected often in mainstream Hollywood movies, which still feature predominantly white casts. So when we get a mini-wave of movies with black casts — summer sleeper “Straight Outta Compton,” religious drama “The War Room,” and now, “The Perfect Guy” — is it any wonder that black viewers come out in droves to see these films?

    There’s Star Power, and Then There’s Star Power

    “Perfect Guy” leads Sanaa Lathan, Michael Ealy, and Morris Chestnut may not be household names among all viewers, but African-American audiences know them well — Lathan and Chestnut from the “Best Man” movies and Ealy from the “Think Like a Man” series. So the movie did benefit from their unique brand of star power.

    So did “The Visit,” but not from its actors. Rather, the star of “The Visit” is director Shyamalan, whose early spooky hits like “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs” made him a brand name and a one-man genre. Granted, that was a long time ago, and Shyamalan all but trashed his own brand with big flops like “The Happening,” “The Last Airbender,” and “After Earth.”

    Critics have seen “The Visit” as a return to the sort of modest, atmospheric, kid-centered horror that was his forte, but those hits were so long ago (from 1999 through 2004) that pundits weren’t sure whether viewers remembered them better than his recent duds. Turns out they did, and that the Shyamalan brand still does have some drawing power, as long as he’s making his old-school horror and not elaborate sci-fi/fantasy spectacle.

    The Studio Touch

    The other secret weapon behind “The Visit” was likely its distributor, Universal, which has dominated the box office this year like no studio since Disney in 1999 (which, by the way, was the year that Disney released “The Sixth Sense”). Big Hollywood studios don’t always do well with small-scale movies (“The Visit” was made for just $5 million), but Universal correctly recognized that the film could succeed with a very wide release (nearly 3,100 screens) and proper marketing that emphasized Shyamalan’s name and the rural-horror premise.

    Don’t shortchange Sony, though. The studio’s ScreenGems label, which released “Perfect Guy,” has a great deal of success with small-scale African-American films, including “The Wedding Ringer” and the “Think Like a Man” films. As a so-called specialty-films division, Screen Gems is well equipped to market low-budget films (“Perfect Guy” cost $12 million) while being backed with enough Sony muscle to book wide-release distribution, in this case, at more than 2,200 venues.

    Other Underserved Audiences

    “Perfect Guy” didn’t just appeal to black viewers, but also to women in general (its plot about a successful woman whose new boyfriend turns out to be a dangerous creep is pretty universal) and to older viewers. Exit polling showed its audience to be 69 percent female and 58 percent over the age of 25. It may have swiped some of the potential ticket buyers for “The Visit,” which, like most horror films, also skewed predominantly female 60 percent).

    Rusty Box Office Tracking

    As a group, the box office predictors have gotten it wrong a lot this summer — arguably more than any other year — with lowball predictions for a number of hit movies. In the case of “Jurassic World,” they were off by tens of millions of dollars, and they didn’t anticipate the successes of sleepers like “Compton” or “War Room.” Are they still clinging to old assumptions about what sort of star power is still a box office draw these days, or the hunger of audiences other than teenage boys to see a wide variety of non-comic-book life experiences on the big screen?

    If so, maybe surprise hits like “Perfect Guy” and “The Visit” can serve as a wake-up call.