Bride Wars

This movie has some good actors and actresses. But the characters are a little bit stupid and the story is meaningless. However, i didn't get bored while watching it. I think it worth a try.

Anne Hathaway rules the screens this month in Singapore, with three movies hitting the screens - Rachel Getting Married, Passengers, and now teaming up with Kate Hudson for my second wedding theme movie of the day, Bride Wars. Alas this film by director Gary Winick had the trailer to thank for in letting every cat out of the bag that there's little surprise left when the girls have a go at each other.

Liv (Hudson) and Emma (Hathaway) are best friends since young, where they were subconsciously programmed that they must be each other's maid of honour, as well as to have their weddings at New York's swanky The Plaza in June. Fast forward to today, and they are on the cusp of their engagements, which of course meant that they do get to finally turn their long held dreams into reality. From being girly about attending each other's events to engaging one of the finest wedding planners ever, Marion St. Claire (Candice Bergen), little do they know a small administrative screw up will threaten their very friendship.

One wonders if girls can indeed be so petty over such little details. You see, the entire plot hinges on this very fine condition that the two girls hold onto, and that is to be each other's maid of honour. Which doesn't make sense because they can each have their wedding on the same day and at the same venue (different ballrooms of course), but because of their insistence to be present at their best friend's wedding, they fall out, insult each other, and declare war.

So only if you buy that wee bit of irrationality (OK, so some claim that the opposite sex can get unreasonable from time to time...) do you buy into the entire bickering, where they go one up against the other, sabotaging plans to be at their best come their wedding day. It also helps that the demeanour of the girls are on opposite sides of the spectrum, with Liv being the alpha-female go-getter who doesn't take no for an answer, and Emma the good natured sweetheart. Of course the series of back-biting do change their characters both for the worse and for the better. Best friends can become your worst enemies since they know every dirty little secret you had confided in them before, and can exploit your very weakness to gain an advantage, so one can find it easy to identify with the predicament of both sides.

Those who suffer will nonetheless be the common friends, who have to sit on the fence and not take sides. The trailer has spelt out the storyline and laid out the best jokes on the table, so unless you're really hard up for jokes that you know the punchline to, this may be just an average chick flick. Having it rated PG (instead of the original NC-16) also meant that some of the more coarse dialogue in Marion St. Claire's meeting with the girls, get chopped off quite abruptly.

Martin Scorsese once famously said he does one movie for the studio and one for himself, and so do many other directors or actors (George Clooney admits he did Ocean's Thirteen because that way he could do Michael Clayton next). Although Anne Hathaway hasn't explicitly said she does that, one can assume it's the only rational explanation for a piece of anti-cinematic trash like Bride Wars. Shooting The Devil Wears Prada after Brokeback Mountain is one thing, tainting your Oscar-nominated legacy with this bunch of nonsense is another.

And yet it sounded like it could be a lot of fun, at least judging by the premise, which reverses the classic wedding stereotype: women are in it for the romance, guys are game because it's fun (that's what they make it look like in American comedies, anyway). This time around, the dudes are in it for the love, and the girls want to get married just to make a childhood dream come true. Apparently, if you're a woman and live in Manhattan, the ultimate dream of your life is to get married at the Plaza in June, so when best friends Liv (Kate Hudson with a Paris Hilton/Britney Spears haircut) and Emma (Hathaway) get asked the fundamental question by their beaus, they immediately try to book the right place and date. A mix-up occurs, and so they're both stuck with the same date, June 6th. Neither wants to postpone what's supposed to be the happiest day of their lives, therefore a full-on war is declared on both parts.

At this point, the real silliness kicks in: diet sabotage, tans gone awry and the occasional witty remark, like "Your wedding's gonna be huge, just like your ass at prom". What started as a potentially entertaining critique of materialism and shallowness is revealed to be a poorly executed farce, with a succession of lame jokes instead of a plot (then again, one of the screenwriters is best known for performing on Saturday Night Live, where the skits have no connection whatsoever, so that may be an explanation) and two atrocious caricatures instead of leading ladies.

In fairness, no one ever expected any true brilliance from Hudson, given the last really good movie she appeared in was Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous in 2000, but surely someone could have told Hathaway you just don't choose something this bland after working with Jonathan Demme (or Ang Lee, for that matter). Maybe she wanted to return to her comedic roots, but sadly there's nothing even remotely funny in Bride Wars, save for a few brief scenes featuring the reliable Candice Bergen. Everything else is just like Liv and Emma: obsessed with getting everything right, but ultimately too self-centered to get any sympathy from others.

The movie tells a story of two childhood friends who had a dream of a perfect wedding ceremony in a Plaza Hotel. When the girls are already young and beautiful women and the day comes that they are both engaged, they start to plan their perfect wedding in Plaza. Thereby the are confronted with different problems and even try to ruin each others wedding.

"Bride Wars" doesn't really stand for movies I usually watch. Although I wanted to watch it, mainly because of Anne Hathaway. I was told she is a good actress and is playing quite good in that movie. Well I can partly agree with that. Her performance in "Bride Wars" was surely satisfactory, however I believe her role was not really challenging. For the rest, I have to confess that the story of the movie is quite poor. It is obvious that the idea of the movie is to show us how two childhood friends deal with their friendship when their most desired dream seems to come true. However this appears unrealistic in the movie. Two best friends who know each other for over twenty years wouldn't try to spoil each others lives. "Bride Wars" appears also not that funny as it probably should be. The jokes are even a bit dumb and absolutely not funny.

Summing up I think that "Bride Wars" is a motion picture made more for girls who also have bright thoughts about their wedding.

Live (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) are best friends and want to be the maid of honor in each other's wedding. However a scheduling mistake places both their weddings on the same date in the same place. They go nuts, and chaos ensues.

I love the best friend chemistry between Hudson and Hathaway. The problem is that the structure of the movie has them separated and hating each other. It's a lousy message, and it makes for a sad watch. It makes these women petty little children of the worst kind. And the worst sin of all, it makes them not funny. People behaving badly can be funny, but just not here. Chris Pratt is actually playing somebody reasonable which makes the final twist very weird. It's not properly set up. There are too many things wrong with this movie.