Cynical chick flick

If there’s anything reality shows like Bridezillas and even My Super Sweet 16 have taught us, it’s that women can be downright vicious when it comes to their special day. While I personally have yet to meet anyone quite so self-centered as the women on those shows, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief for an hour and a half of good fun.

Except Bride Wars is fundamentally flawed. The premise and the storyline just don’t match up, even in this alternate universe we call cinema.

The premise is that Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) have been BFFs for, like, ever, and they’ve been planning their big, beautiful weddings for just as long. Now they’re 26, working in New York City, and miraculously they both get engaged the same week. And since they’ve shared the same dream for over a decade, they naturally go to the same wedding planner and try to book the same venue for the same month.

Had the film’s writers been content with the aforementioned coincidences and similarities, the movie could have worked smashingly. Two best friends fighting over whose wedding is going to be more memorable … there’s some comedy genius in there somewhere. But no, they had to go and bugger things up by not only scheduling the weddings in the same month but on the same day.

The two then set out to ruin each others’ evenings by any means possible, baring their fangs to the world. Hudson and Hathaway, who have both made names for themselves playing good girls, are fun to watch being mean. And Kristen Johnston adds hilarity as Emma’s self-absorbed co-worker. Candace Bergen is OK as the wedding planner, but considering how impersonal her character is, it makes no sense that she should narrate the film.

Here’s my biggest problem: If these girls are truly best friends, then would they really let their wedding nights get between them? Maybe I’m just not materialistic or wedding-obsessed enough to understand. Maybe these girls do exist. And maybe the movie wouldn’t have been as funny if they’d have been able to get over themselves and see each other. But it also would have been that much more sweet, that much more of a chick flick about friendship. And that’s what this film is missing.