Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS

The disconnect between Hollywood and mainstream America is glaringly obvious in the latest reviews for the new Christian comedy, Mom's Night Out, which fans are raving about but critics are calling "depressingly regressive and borderline dangerous."

Breitbart is reporting that the new comedy, directed by Jon and Andrew Erwin (October Baby) and starring Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond) debuted in a limited number of theaters last weekend but still grossed $4.3 million - the highest per-screen average of the weekend. Fans loved the movie, with 86 percent of moviegoers giving it a thumbs up. Compare that to the mere 15 percent of Rotten Tomato critics who gave the film a positive review - which amounts to a 71 percent chasm between the viewers and the critics.

Why were critics so hard on a movie that fans found so entertaining? Because it was  about stay-at-home moms.

"Some critics are outright threatened by Patricia Heaton's faith-friendly PG-rated comedy and apparently have changed their minds about a woman having a right to CHOOSE … if that choice is to stay at home and raise their children," writes Breitbart's John Nolte.

Perhaps the most over-the-top review came from RogerEbert.com who called the film "Depressingly regressive and borderline dangerous," accusing it of peddling "archaic notions of gender roles in the name of wacky laughs."

Stay-at-home moms are "borderline dangerous" and "archaic"? What planet is this reviewer living on?

"With all the critically-acclaimed movies out there exploiting women in demeaning sex scenes, what bothers these bigots is a movie character who chooses kids over a career? Sick world," Nolte writes.

The only people who are borderline dangerous in this discussion are those whose ideology is so myopic that they would diss 29 percent of all U.S. mothers simply for choosing to stay home with their children. Someone might want to tell them these numbers have actually been rising over the last few years as more and more women exercise their "right to choose".

The only films that will rate high enough to get a positive review from these snobs are those that portray mothers as either "having it all" or as "stay-at-home-whack jobs" because, as Nolte concludes, according to them, if a woman doesn't have a career (outside the home), there must be something wrong with her.

Must be kind of stuffy living in such a small world. . .

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