Review of Bride Wars (2009) by Markb. — 23 Jan 2009

Regarding the three weddings I served as best man for, all three couples eschewed a big, elaborate, expensive wedding. Two of them had small, private ceremonies at home for family and a few close friends; the third opted for a justice of the peace.

In all three cases the logic was that the money would be better spent on: a.) starting a new life together; b.) a great honeymoon, or c.) both. Smart people, they. Leaving aside obvious questions about the wisdom of paying for a gargantuan ceremony in today's economy (since, in all fairness, this movie probably sat on the shelf long before things started going seriously downhill), you have to ask whether the two "heroines" of this unbearable, laugh-free chick flick possess between them both the emotional maturity to cross the street unaided much less embark on an endeavor as difficult, challenging and all-consuming as a marriage if, although they're so-called best friends, they can't come up with a viable solution to having both their weddings accidentally scheduled on the same day other than pulling unceasingly despicable (and worse, unimaginative and unfunny) dirty tricks on each other? (Another of this toxic puffball's many inadvertent messages, grooms-to-be, is that if you dare to express an honest opinion to your fiancee, you do so at the risk of having the wedding called off.

Lucky you!) It's a measure of how completely clueless Bride Wars is that the heartless screenwriters not only obviously don't care about the poor woman whose scheduling glitch gets her fired, but since she's neither wealthy nor a "hottie" like Kate Hudson or Anne Hathaway, we're not expected to care either, but what the heck is a good director like Gary Winick (the lovely remake of Charlotte's Web) doing here? One theory may be that his previous effort 13 Going on 30 depicted a driven businesswoman regressing to early adolescence and here Winick wanted to outdo himself by having TWO career gals behave like kindergarteners, but this would be an insult to kindergarteners everywhere.

Anne Hathaway (God bless her) is a fine actress who has heretofore proven her ability to make unsympathetic characters at least understandable if not likable (as in Rachel Getting Married and Brokeback Mountain) so even this junk can't COMPLETELY defeat her, but Kate Hudson (God help her) is rapidly squandering the goodwill she built up seemingly an eternity ago in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous.

So which group of movies is easier to sit through, Kate's past year's output of Fool's Gold, My Best Friend's Girl and this...or her mom, Goldie Hawn's 1970s and 80s throwaway flicks Protocol, Overboard and The Girl From Petrovka? Simply put, mother knows best.