“The Wedding Date.” “The Wedding Planner.” “27 Dresses.” “Made of Honor.” “License to Wed.” It goes without saying that there are plenty of absolutely abysmal wedding-themed movies, many more than the handful of decent ones. Add to the list one of the year’s first major studio releases, “Bride Wars,” also known as “The Official End of Kate Hudson’s Acting Career (and of Anne Hathaway’s Agent’s Career).”
Why do so many romantic comedies centered on a wedding fail to deliver more laughs than groans? Such films tend to be humorless, and “Bride Wars” is no exception. These movies attempt to take one of the most routinely ordinary of events in our society and turn it into something just the opposite — extraordinary. The obvious result is largely ridiculous.
The latest, for example, pivots on the disastrous and totally unforeseeable double booking of best friends Emma’s (Anne Hathaway “The Devil Wears Prada”) and Liv’s (Kate Hudson “Fool’s Gold”) weddings for the same day. Neither self-effacing bride is willing to change her date, so the situation quickly turns into dual sabotage campaigns that struggle to fill the draw out 90-minute affair. The revenge comedy wastes no time in digressing to shrieks and cattiness, leaving the audience feeling more tortured than the backstabbing tramps. As far as the absurd plot goes, Liv’s revelation toward the film’s long-awaited end that “this fighting is stupid” sums it up well.
In addition to the film’s dull plotline, “Bride Wars” includes ex post facto narration by a legendary wedding planner (Candice Bergen), the most painful scrapbook-esque montage sequences to grace cinema and a vapid soundtrack with songs that dare to rhyme “radio” with “stereo.” The disastrous film is then completed with the ridiculously flimsy and predictable character back stories — Liv is a steely dynamo with deadened emotions from the loss of her parents who eventually has the profound revelation that it is OK to not always be perfect, whereas Emma is a pushover who finally finds her voice — in an attempt to round them out (though Hudson is round enough in several senses).
Genre issues and total lack of originality aside, “Bride Wars” mainly crashes because it is painfully unfunny. Yet when the three-man team of screenwriters’ rely on American Idol and ex-fat jokes about Hudson’s character (the “ex” part of which is baffling) for their comedic material, little can be reasonably expected in this non-comedic, nor particularly romantic, romantic comedy. “Bride Wars” is simply humorless and fraught with stupidity, to which the silence during screenings can attest. It’s cruel even for masochists.
Yet the most outrageous and ironic catastrophe of “Bride Wars” is its blatantly offensive portrayal of its target audience: women. If this were satire, it may be palatable. But without any substantial or intellectual criticism, the film instead embraces the depiction of women as fanatics obsessed with the notion of self-completion only realized through marriage and child-rearing (i.e., complete submission to a patriarchal system). Although the exaggerations are intentional, throughout the film women are painted as sad and unfulfilled without being happily married, and thus frenetically bent on wedding mania. The potential stab at social commentary is diluted down to a pitiful endorsement.
It then has the gall to end, at least under the guise of sincerity, with the trivial and inane message that some things really do last forever, which might as well have read “omg, bffs!” as the film continues to intellectually belittle the viewer.
Watching “Bride Wars” is much like attending a dry wedding or having to dance with your overly perfumed great-aunt Muriel at one. It’s just something that should never be done. Insulting to women and virtually anyone else, the movie is a major misstep for Hathaway, and hopefully the last we’ll see of Hudson, also one of the film’s producers, who hasn’t had a decent film since “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” There are no mitigating factors, except a few one-liners by bit players and Hathaway’s legs, but really anything looks sexy next to the wrestler arms and shoulders of Hudson, who should not have opted for sleeveless. As the wedding recipe goes, “Bride Wars” is definitely something old and something borrowed. That’s about it.
1/2 star out of 5
