BEFORE: We're getting close to Valentine's Day now, love is in the air - or is that the smell of the heart-shaped brownie batter donuts available at Dunkin?
Victor Garber carries over from "How Stella Got Her Groove Back", this makes three films for him in February, even if they weren't all in a row.
THE PLOT: When a young woman realizes her brother is about to marry the girl who bullied her in high school, she sets out to expose his fiancée's true colors.
AFTER: Well, the second week of the romance chain has certainly issue-oriented - we've covered infidelity in Portland, a murder trial in Boston, animal rights legislation in Washington, and dating younger men in Jamaica. Tonight's central focus is high-school bullying, and the effects on both the bullied AND the bulliers years later, in the fictitious Ridgefield, California.
Marni was your typical geeky girl, she had glasses, braces and acne - the dreaded triangle of high-school unattractiveness - but in the ten (?) years since high school, she managed to turn things around, get better haircuts, contact lenses, and is rising through the ranks of a successful PR firm. She's come to terms with the fact that her life in high school was less than ideal, but it shaped her into the person that she is, and she's made her peace with it. Until, that is, she finds out that her brother is engaged to Joanna, the girl she knew in high school as "JJ", who made her life miserable. How her brother met Joanna, formed a bond with her, got engaged, all without knowing that this girl was cruel to his sister in the past, well, that's a bit questionable. But it's exactly the situation that needs to be resolved, so you just sort of have to accept it.
Marni refuses to accept this, even though when she returns home (apparently for the first time in a long while) for the wedding, Joanna claims not to remember her. Is it possible that Marni has changed so much in 10 years that her former tormentor doesn't recognize her? Joanna also is a doctor who works for charitable organizations, it really seems like maybe she's turned over a new leaf - but, HAS SHE? Or is it all an act, a con game, and if so, how much of her is genuine, and how much is a put-on? Marni has to know before the wedding takes place, so she drops hints, brings up old gossip from high school, essentially she pokes the bear, hoping to get a reaction.
Meanwhile, Joanna's Aunt Mona, who's a successful hotelier and is footing the bill for the wedding, arrives on the scene, and recognizes Marni's mother from her high-school days. The two older women also had some kind of antagonistic relationship in high school (Jeez, what are the ODDS of that?) even though they started out as besties, there was some incident at prom involving somebody pushing somebody else into the pool. Not cool.
Once Marni determines that her bully from high school has NOT really changed her ways, she feels vindicated, but also reverts to her "loser" persona from high school - events seem to conspire against her, and she ends up with a bad haircut, skin irritations and loses her contact lenses in a freak accident, so she looks just like her yearbook photo again. And her mother's going through something similar, back competing with her own high-school nemesis. The wedding plans keep moving forward, with the soon-to-be extended family taking dance lessons together, and the two women accidentally wear the same dress to the rehearsal dinner.
Marni also invites Joanna's ex-boyfriend (a little too conveniently, he works for the wedding planner) to the rehearsal dinner, just to cause a fuss, and also unearths a time capsule that wasn't supposed to be opened for 50 years, just to get a video of Joanna acting cruel to her. (Umm, NITPICK POINT, how did that video get approved for the time capsule in the first place? Wasn't there any kind of oversight committee checking what was being put in the capsule, to make sure that the material was appropriate for future generations to watch?). The point, however, is that Marni's taken to fighting fire with fire, she's become the bully of her bully, and two wrongs don't necessarily make a right. The fight between Marni and Joanna turns physical, just as her brother returns to the scene, causing him to get mad at both women - and he's not wrong.
Eventually there are apologies and reconciliations all around, and of course this is a rom-com, so the wedding does eventually take place, just not in the way originally intended. But at no point in the early part of the film does anyone speak openly with anyone else about their feelings, and I guess we all then see where exactly that can end up, devolving into a lot of slapstick - broken vases and a tureen of soup dumped on someone's head.
But there are still a number of things that don't really add up here. Here's what bothered me - the groom wants to move the family's beloved treehouse from the house he grew up in to his future home. Who DOES that? First of all, a treehouse is probably built specifically to the specs and contours of THAT particular tree - where the branches are, how much weight that tree can support, etc. Moving it to another tree is a terrible idea, Marni's against it, but why can't she reason with her own brother, explain why this is a bad idea, also it's not fair to their little brother, who still enjoys spending time in the treehouse. You want a treehouse in your new backyard? Fine, then build one yourself in your own tree! It's representative of what happens throughout this whole film, everyone's always walking on eggshells around everybody else, afraid to have the exact conversation that's needed to resolve any issue. Why does it have to be like this?
(Also, if you wanted that treehouse to stay where it is, you shouldn't LOOSEN all the screws, you should tighten them, plus add some more nails. Just saying.)
Betty White stars as Marni's grandmother, and there's a funny bit at the end that suggests that this rivalry between women has been going on for generations - but even then, there's a difference between two girls being rivals/frenemies and one girl flat-out bullying another girl very cruelly, it's too bad the film just seems to lump these different situations together and not make a distinction between them. If you remember, I half-dedicated this year to the late Betty White, so it only took me 43 films to get to one with her in it, and there's at least one more film with her coming up in June.
Another NITPICK POINT, though - Marni doesn't have enough pull via her PR firm to get in touch with the most sought-after wedding planner, but she's somehow got enough juice to get Hall and Oates to play at the wedding? It just seems like a weird place to draw that line.
Also starring Kristen Bell (last seen in "Scream 4"), Jamie Lee Curtis (last seen in "Knives Out"), Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "The Cold Light of Day"), Odette Annable/Yustman, James Wolk (last seen in "The Stanford Prison Experiment"), Betty White (last seen in "Hard Rain"), Kristin Chenoweth (last heard in "Strange Magic"), Sean Wing, Kyle Bornheimer (last heard in "Onward"), Billy Unger/William Brent (last heard in "Bride Wars"), Christine Lakin (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Paul Nygro (ditto), Meagan Holder, Reginald VelJohnson, Staci Keanan, Shanola Hampton, Jenna Leigh Green (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Christopher Khai, Ashley Fink, with cameos from Dwayne Johnson (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Cloris Leachman (last seen in "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse"), Daryl Hall, John Oates, Catherine Bach (last seen in "Hustle").
RATING: 5 out of 10 better ways to deal with bullying
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