Review of Bride Wars (2009) by Chads. — 10 Jan 2009

With a friend like Liv(Kate Hudson), who needs enemies? With a friend like Emma(Anne Hathaway), who needs enemies? Therein lies the fundamental problem of "Bride Wars". Since this idiom applies to both women, the audience has no rooting interest.

In a galaxy far, far away, women act irrationally towards each other to such an absurd degree, it's equally irrational, equally absurd that they should kiss and make up, without even the stopgap measure of a truce before the ironclad reconciliation.

That galaxy is the prefabricated world of "Bride Wars", where weddings are a rite of passage for women with late-blooming arrested development, and short, very short memories. Women like Emma and Liz don't exist; they're not recognizably human(blue hair is not something any woman would forget, not even temporarily), therefore, not the least bit funny(utilizing a blouse as some turban to hide the blue hair is not a choice any sensible woman would make).

"Bride Wars" plays like a chick flick with the DNA of a black comedy. The moment Emma decides against moving her wedding date for the more successful friend(Liv is a lawyer), "Bride Wars" circuitously references "Beaches" with the schoolteacher's refusal to be the wind beneath the other bride's wings, and beaches "Beaches" by being the anti-"Beaches", with its feel-bad hijinks.

The audience should be on Emma's side, but she loses them, with this ugly putdown: "Your wedding will be big, like your ass on prom night." In a mainstream comedy, it's probably a mistake that Emma should be this unsympathetic; the antithesis of the middle school teacher in Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's novel "Ms.

Hempel Chronicles". When both women were adolescents, Liv probably started off as the smart one, while Emma was the pretty one; then Liz lost weight and the agency of their friendship switched hands.

In the opening scene, the two girls play bride and groom, and Emma is the groom, the man in the relationship. Emma fattens Liv up with treats to reverse time, so the lawyer can be her fat wife again, and regain that long-lost agency in their adult selves.

After all, this insulting, misogynistic film depicts both women as children, anyway.