my review<\/a> last May. Some parts work, some parts don\u2019t, and it\u2019s about what you\u2019d expect from a movie about a wild and crazy night that is meant to be safe for the whole family.<\/p>\n(Question: Should a movie about a parent who needs grown-up time away from the kids really bill itself as a movie for the whole family?)<\/p>\n
I did watch the film with my wife this time, and she said it was better than she expected, at least at first, though she didn\u2019t care for some of the comic conceits, such as the father who panics at the sight of little children (including his own), or the restaurant that has a five-star rating despite being rather condescending to at least some of its customers. She did like the film apart from that, though.<\/p>\n
Speaking of wives, one of the first bonus features on the disc is a featurette on \u2018The Heart of Moms\u2019 Night Out<\/i>,\u2019 in which the producer and the directors sit next to their wives and let their wives explain what they liked about the film.<\/p>\n
Conspicuously absent from the bonus features is the film\u2019s screenwriter, Andrea Gyertson Nasfell. Officially, she shares the screenwriting credit with one<\/i> of the two men who directed the film. But in one of the bonus features \u2014 a video in which co-star Alex Kendrick, a real-life pastor, gives a sort of devotional pep talk to the cast and crew \u2014 Kendrick identifies Nasfell as the person who started this whole thing.<\/p>\n
Considering that the film is about women, and that some critics have been quite critical of the gender roles embodied by its characters, you\u2019d think the people who made this DVD might have been keen to focus on the one woman who had a significant hand in crafting the story. There\u2019s a lot of talk about how the filmmakers wanted to \u201cgive\u201d something to their wives, but if Nasfell really got the ball rolling in the first place, then I\u2019d be very interested to know what motivated her<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, there are two versions of the DVD. The regular version features the aforementioned audio commentary, deleted scenes, and interviews in which the filmmakers and the actors discuss the casting, their use of improv, and how they staged the more action-oriented sequences. It has some bloopers as well.<\/p>\n
A second version, available only at Christian bookstores, features all of those bonus features and<\/i> another half-dozen or so, including Kendrick\u2019s devotional pep talk.<\/p>\n
In \u2018The Difference Between Moms and Dads,\u2019 the actors try to describe what makes one kind of parent different from the other \u2014 and they don\u2019t always agree. Robert Amaya (he plays the dad who panics at the sight of kids) says moms are more nurturing and emotional while dads are the kind of people who just put the band-aid on, while Andrea Logan White (who plays Amaya\u2019s wife) says dads live in the moment and play with their kids while moms try to keep things organized. It\u2019s possible to reconcile these statements, but they do tilt in different directions, I think.<\/p>\n
The other exclusive features include short videos on three of the main actresses. We learn that Sarah Drew got the acting bug when she went to a Christian school as a kid, while White and Abbie Cobb take things in a more serious direction by discussing how they have dealt with depression and a death in the family, respectively.<\/p>\n
There are also some ads for the film\u2019s mom-oriented \u201cministry partners\u201d.<\/p>\n
The regular version of the disc is available from Amazon and the like as a standalone Blu-Ray<\/a> or a standalone DVD<\/a>, while the \u201cChristian\u201d version with the extra bonus features is available as a standalone DVD<\/a> or as a Blu-Ray\/DVD<\/a> combo pack.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bonus features focus on the men who produced and directed this film, along with their wives, but where is the woman who actually wrote the original script?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2479,272,2266,2262,2146,2477,2478],"class_list":["post-21400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-abbie-cobb","tag-alex-kendrick","tag-andrea-gyertson-nasfell","tag-andrea-logan-white","tag-moms-night-out","tag-robert-amaya","tag-sarah-drew"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"momsnightout\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2014\/09\/momsnightout.jpg\")
<\/a>The kids are back in school today, so it\u2019s kind of fitting that today marks the DVD and Blu-Ray release of Moms\u2019 Night Out<\/a><\/i>, a film about a woman who wants to get away from the kids for a few hours and spend some time with her friends.<\/p>\n