Bad Parents (2012)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Let's start out with the cards on the table -- don't see this movie if you aren't a soccer mom or dad. Don't see this movie if you are the parent of those 1% super human mini-athletes who run circles around their classmates... unless you've been through the sausage making machine called US youth soccer with them (or their less talented siblings). You won't relate to any of the satire, and you'll be so underwhelmed with the phoned in performances, low production value, and lack of any explanation of the central character's various arcs. Put simply, it's a sketch comedy based all around youth soccer. As a stand up routine, it would be gold. As a low budget film, it leaves a lot to be desired.Now to the good. The themes:(1) US youth sports today are ridiculous enough to drive parents insane... nearly every parent can relate to that. (2) Youth soccer in particular has become a mangled mish-mosh of divergent priorities from the various stakeholders. Could not be truer. (3) That our society is obsessed with results, even from 7 year old "athletes" who would rather be out kicking a ball against a wall than listening to a coach give them a lecture. Hey, we've all been there... soccer, little league, gymnastics, even butter sculpting (more on that later).Finally there are the particular skeletons of youth soccer laid bare: A team/B team politics. Excessive cost. Community elitism. Amateur youth coach "credentialing" and "career" making. And nepotism. You will eye roll at the mom who is ready to sleep with the coach to get her daughter playing time, but secretly thing of 3 moms who you know who you wouldn't put it past. You will shake your head when the moms gossip on the sideline about whose riding the bench or getting too much playing time, but you'll secretly call up similar late night conversations you've had with your best confidants. If you've ever coached, you'll be shouting "amen" when the internal debates about fun vs. winning as cooped by the cut-throat agenda character and the sane parent is boxed out. Buzzwords and jargon -- in 7 y.o. sports. Things that happen, but dialed up a few notches to drive hove the ridiculousness. The ending however is a weak attempt at a comedic "twist", and frankly falls flat. The only characters with any arc -- the assistant coach, who fills the sycophantic role to be scorned by the audience, and the laundry mom -- pop in and out of focus in such isolated bursts that by the time they have "evolved", the audience doesn't really think much of it. And one thing that's left out -- the violence. At one point, a parent yells from the sidelines: "Don't let her push you... push her back." Most of the flaws of soccer the film parodies are things that people do try to mitigate in the soccer world. Coaches do set up even teams, and try to set up even playing time, not to help kids psychies, but to ensure that the entire crop is tended long enough for the prize tomato to ripen. One thing that is understated, however, if the on field brutality of the game. If they had filmed realistic matches for this film, with the pushing and the elbowing and the steam rolling and the unsafe tackling... the child work standards board would have shut down the film. And it's that escalation of "aggressive play", something very foreign to most parents who grew up playing the game when it was the less violent alternative to American football, that makes this film incomplete. The more timid players become disenchanted with the game after getting mashed up by bigger, more aggressive kids far more than they do from riding the bench. Lots of girls I've coached actually like to sit on the sideline and goof around with their friends. Like waiting for your at-bat in the dugout with little league -- it's what makes the game fun for the kids who aren't hitting the home runs. However, I've seen at least one girl (we're talking about U8 - U10) in every season leave the field with a bad injury -- broken ankles, broken wrists, concussions, torn ligaments. The deficiency (and nepotency in hiring) of 14-year "older player" referees is completely missing from this film.In fairness, most of these objects of scorn and ire are universal to "communicty" competition in the US. The best way to poke fun at them is to sever them from the sport, so that the nit's and nat's of the accuracy of portraying that sport don't ruin the film. Many films have tried to satirize girls youth soccer, from Rodney Dangerfield's prescient "The Ladybugs" in 1992, to 2005's "Kicking and Screaming" which was basically a Will Farrel comedic "loser" vehicle with some kids in it. Neither of them has been able to do the sport justice, nor does Bad Parents. While I think this film is worth a few chuckles, for my money, it doesn't even come close to "Butter", which takes these elements of back-room board meetings, nepotency (and anti-nepotency), fullfillment by proxy, and lays them bare in the ridiculous sport of butter carving. That film achieves, without a bigger budget or more acting pedigree, to turn in a 100% satirical masterpiece.

For a comedy, then "Bad Parents" was disturbing devoid of laughs and funny moments. As for the drama, well, this movie is sort of the kind of movie that will cause you to get worked up over the characters in the movie, as they really infuriate the audience with their arrogance, their lack of interest for the kids game, and how it becomes a matter of prestige for the parents to have their kids in the game.The story is about a small town who puts together a girls soccer team. The coach, which is an arrogant schmuck - to say the least - decides to put the girls into two groups; an A group for the obviously talented players and B group for the less talented group. This has the soccer mom's worked up and struggling to get their girls into the A group. The pressure becomes more and more intense as the girls progress to the semi finals.I will say that the concept idea for this storyline may have worked well on script paper, but it didn't translate well into physically being on the screen. Or perhaps it was just the directing of the movie that was questionable.The characters in the movie well nicely enough fleshed out and detailed, though most of them come off a snobs, arrogant individuals and people who don't have any consideration about the well-being and fun of their children in the soccer games, and as people who just want to have a prestigious place on the A team. As such, then you really hate and loathe most of the characters in the movie, and they will ignite a spark of anger and resentment in the audience.Somewhere along the line, the comedy dropped out of this movie entirely, and there were no laughs at all to be found anywhere.It should be said that they do have some good actors and actresses on the cast list to portray these annoying characters and roles. I decided to watch the movie solely because of Janeane Garofalo, but must admit that this movie was not among her better movies.Now, I am not overly familiar with soccer moms and the world that they exist in, but I am sure that this movie took all that and put it to the extreme, because the movie was really over the top.

A film festival gem that i think will make it to the big screen. The same woman wrote and directed this (Jentis), and she should strength as a fine filmmaker, with a film that is at a Hollywood studio level. Bad Parents is about a group of soccor moms and dads, who will do anything to see their young grade schoolers succeed in making the "A Team", which is coached by a complete jerk. Doesn't sound like a unique story, but the writing is so clever and funny, that this turns out to be a unique film. There are outstanding performances all the way around, from Janene Garafolo (the lead) to the Cheri Oteri (from Saturday Night Live) in a big supporting role as a wickedly insensitive mom who truly will do anything for a her daughter to be a team starter. The coach was great, as well. I totally recommend this one, for a good laugh and some thinking.

Just saw this at the Austin Film Festival. Plot lines are dropped. Narration goes nowhere. Much of the story stutters and starts and does not end. There are lots of plot holes and unexplained and unresolved issues with story lines, characterizations, and the writing was not strong enough to really make me care what happened, it just made me angry that it didn't finish. The sound mixing and editing was unbearable. The lines recorded in post were so evident and that it was literally blaring in the middle of the character's conversation. Almost no attempt to incorporate them into the prerecorded dialogue.Characters are not fleshed out and unlikable. No one has a redeeming quality. The casting was misdirected (why does the black/white biracial couple have a child darker than the black parent?). People are introduced into the movie and then never seen again. There was a lot of potential. Disappointing.