Directed by: Gary Winick
Starring: Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway, Steve Howey, Chris Pratt, Candice Bergen, Kristen Johnston, John Pankow
What did we really expect from Bride Wars anyway? We know the story arc: Lifelong friends turn into spiteful, vengeful enemies when each books her respective wedding on the same day. They do nasty, mean things to each other in order to undermine the upcoming nuptials, only to reconcile at the eleventh hour with a forced happy ending. The girls seemingly have amnesia and forget all about the horrible pranks they perpetrated on each other in the previous weeks.
I'm not saying such comedies can't work. Sometimes a little nastiness and poor taste can be funny, but Bride Wars is content on following its formula and amusing itself as the girls mess up each other's hair and tans. Its two leads are enormously appealing: Anne Hathaway is an Oscar winner, while Kate Hudson was an Oscar nominee for Almost Famous in what seems like a lifetime ago. I'm not sure she has been in a good movie since.
A little background: Hathaway and Hudson play Emma and Liv, who are lifelong friends engaged at the same time. They both dream of holding their weddings in June at the Plaza in New York. They visit the Plaza's wedding coordinator (Bergen), who erroneously books their weddings at the same time on the same day, so they are not able to act as each other's maid-of-honor. Neither woman wants to postpone her wedding, so it's on. The fact that they go from friends to bitter enemies over this makes me wonder how strong their friendship was to begin with.
Emma sends Liv chocolates which she can't stop eating, thus causing her to gain five pounds and screw up how well she fits into her Vera Wang wedding dress. "You don't have Vera Wang altered to fit you. You alter yourself to fit Vera Wang," Liv tells her hapless fiancé (Howey), who people may know as Kevin from Shameless. Emma's fiancée (Pratt) is equally hapless, wondering what happened to the Emma he fell in love with years ago. The grooms don't seem to have lives of their own or opinions. They don't even seem to care about the whole booking error thing, so they stand idly by and watch the girls make each other miserable.
Liv gains revenge on Emma by messing with her spray tan settings which causes Emma to walk around looking like one of Willy Wonka's oompa loompas. In 2009, this might have been slightly amusing. Fast forward to 2016 and orange skin doesn't cause anyone to look twice. Donald Trump conducted his whole Presidential campaign with this bizarre orange hue to his skin and no one flinched. Emma messes with Liv's hair appointment to make her hair blue. It doesn't much matter if anyone is keeping score. The plot will neatly rectify itself and all is forgotten and forgiven in the final act.
Bride Wars isn't going to win any points for originality. That doesn't mean it has to be so preordained. It isn't challenging or inspiring, but is more of a lark for all involved. Gary Winick directed the intelligent, touching Jennifer Garner comedy 13 Going on 30 in 2004. He took a formula and cared enough to stretch it so we can actually care about it. In Bride Wars, he doesn't stretch much and the results are just too pat for us to think about it once the ending credits roll.
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