Psychosis reigns in Bride Wars, which should easily one-up any number of sub-par Disney films at the time-honored tradition of perverting the wordly expectations of countless impressionable young girls far and away from any that could be said to reflect reality. Somehow more disconcerting than the blind belief in happily ever after romances, however, is how this film reduces stereotyped cliches into supposedly real-world laughs for the grown-up market – what could be funnier than two best friends acting out of character (which is to say, like total morons) for ninety minutes? Very little, it seems, and so the story of two friends who turn on each other with bared teeth and poised nails when their respective dream weddings are accidentally scheduled on the same day (thus demanding one of them step down, a plot device that seems to have been dropped altogether by the halfway point) gets underway with leaden exposition and a drably unimaginative visual style enough to make one yearn for the comparatively rich complexity of Home Improvement. Narrated with fairy-tale oafishness by Candice Bergen as the elite wedding planner who oversees our two feisty protagonists purportedly epic battle, Bride Wars never challenges the regressive archetypes it swallows wholesale (unlike Legally Blonde, another died-in-the-wool XX title but one that genuinely empowered its pink-infatuated protagonist beyond her immediately superficial qualities), cynically milking laughs from a loveless marriage as if it were nothing more than a deformed sideshow display whilst tossing off lame references to homo and bisexuality with the same verve of a third grade class clown who revels in shouting random obscenities from the back of the classroom. Kate Hudson has long since lowered her standards, but it's hard to not feel bad for Anne Hathaway; in this or any other economic climate, Rachel Getting Married simply doesn't pay the bills.
May 1, 2009
Bride Wars (2009): D
Psychosis reigns in Bride Wars, which should easily one-up any number of sub-par Disney films at the time-honored tradition of perverting the wordly expectations of countless impressionable young girls far and away from any that could be said to reflect reality. Somehow more disconcerting than the blind belief in happily ever after romances, however, is how this film reduces stereotyped cliches into supposedly real-world laughs for the grown-up market – what could be funnier than two best friends acting out of character (which is to say, like total morons) for ninety minutes? Very little, it seems, and so the story of two friends who turn on each other with bared teeth and poised nails when their respective dream weddings are accidentally scheduled on the same day (thus demanding one of them step down, a plot device that seems to have been dropped altogether by the halfway point) gets underway with leaden exposition and a drably unimaginative visual style enough to make one yearn for the comparatively rich complexity of Home Improvement. Narrated with fairy-tale oafishness by Candice Bergen as the elite wedding planner who oversees our two feisty protagonists purportedly epic battle, Bride Wars never challenges the regressive archetypes it swallows wholesale (unlike Legally Blonde, another died-in-the-wool XX title but one that genuinely empowered its pink-infatuated protagonist beyond her immediately superficial qualities), cynically milking laughs from a loveless marriage as if it were nothing more than a deformed sideshow display whilst tossing off lame references to homo and bisexuality with the same verve of a third grade class clown who revels in shouting random obscenities from the back of the classroom. Kate Hudson has long since lowered her standards, but it's hard to not feel bad for Anne Hathaway; in this or any other economic climate, Rachel Getting Married simply doesn't pay the bills.
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ReplyDeleteCurious to know the advertising budget for Rachel Getting Married versus Bride Wars.
ReplyDeleteCan't find anything but I think I know the answer.