Review of Bride Wars (2009) by Elizabeth L — 31 May 2017

It's movies like Bride Wars that make me so happy I was born with a penis. A time ago, HBO had put this movie on hellish rotation; a toothless, vapid comedy that cheapens the institution of marriage by shamelessly pandering to its lowest common denominator. With a voice over from Candice Bergen, we learn that Liv Lerner (Kate Hudson) and Emma Allen (Ann Hathaway) are two life long girlfriends who have fantasized since the age of seven to have June weddings at the Plaza Hotel (hold that thought). Surprise surprise: Now in their twenties, Emma and Liv get engaged at the same time and though they both manage to snare separate dates in June at The Plaza for their respective weddings, through some irreversible glitch, their dates both get switched to the same day.

At first, Liv and Emma are crestfallen over the situation. They try to rectify it, but as the reality sets in that one of them must move their date, the claws begin to unsheathe and Liv and Emma become two of the biggest Bridezilla douche-pies this side of the Bravo Channel. What follows is a rapid devolution of their friendship into a tit for tat rivalry. There's a tanning salon fiasco for Emma and a blue-hair incident for Liv. This is meant to be funny, but it's just tedium. Worse still, the fiances are bit players who don't figure much into the movie's equation at all, and by the end, they become so inessential that they could have been replaced by blow-up dolls.

There are a few glimmers here and there in the characters of wedding planner, Marion St. Clair (the always great Candice Bergen) and Deb (Kristen Johnson), Emma's self involved co-worker. Other than this, not even Ann Hathaway or Kate Hudson can breathe any life into Emma and Liv. The mediocre script doesn't help matters much either. Even still, Hathaway barely manages to acquit herself while Hudson can barely muster any presence. Anyone can have a slip or two, but Hudson has done such a string of flops (How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Fool's Gold) that it's less easier to forgive. Her fantastic turn in Almost Famous seems more and more like a fluke.

Bride Wars doesn't know what it wants to be. This is owing to director Gary Winick's shift in tone. The first half is dedicated to the spiteful revenge stunts the girls pull on each other, but the second half becomes a halfhearted focus into each character's relationship with their fiances. Also, there's a thawing set-up towards the ending so we don't hate either of the girls too much by the time the credits roll. It's too little too late since by this time, I could care less for any of the players. I would even forgive the tonal disparity, weak script and blotchy narrative, if it weren't for one egregious, frightfully disturbing theme that I find completely obsolete and not a little offensive. This movie normalizes the fact that girls should have their weddings planned out by the age of seven; regardless of career, hobbies or friends and family that surround her, a woman isn't accomplished until she's walking down the aisle. And when a woman gets engaged, she has license to act rudely, selfishly, and vindictively by simple virtue of that fact. Bride Wars inadvertently makes a great case against any form of marriage, gay or straight.

And the visual ipecac doesn't stop there. The last straw comes during the epilogue, when one final stroke of bathetic manipulation involving a double pregnancy made me realize that Bride Wars is really only good for one thing: stomach pumping.