BEFORE: Somehow it's Wednesday already, I feel like we JUST had a weekend, and now here we are, headed for another one. It's not just me, time really did get sped up at some point, right? And we've got March coming in just THREE days, the Oscars are on Sunday and before you know it, St. Patrick's Day will be here and I'll be building my chain to get to Easter. While we're investigating ways to stop climate change, can somebody please figure out a way to slow time down, too? Because Einstein told us that time isn't a constant, so clearly it must have changed somehow. It's going by faster than it used to, only I can't prove it because it's affected the clocks, too, they're moving faster right in step with time itself. It's some kind of conspiracy.
Anyhoo, it's not really fair to romance that it got stuck with the shortest month, that's why my romance chains usually extend into March by at least a week, sometimes more. Again when you start one of these themes chains moving, you can't just STOP it, you've got to kind of just slow it down a bit, so I'll taper off the topic around March 7, so I can wrap it up by March 10. That seems about right, I'll have seven days to link to something very Irish - oh, if only there were an Irish movie star who's made a bunch of action films I haven't seen yet, even though I've seen him in a LOT of films. Yeah, I've got this. Also, I've got the Oscars set to record on my DVR so it's time to stock up on snacks again, the Super Bowl for movies is coming!
Sue Jean Kim carries over from "You Hurt My Feelings". Now here's the line-up for Thursday, 2/27, Day 27 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar".
Best Director Winners and Nominees:
7:00 am "Speedy" (1928)
8:30 am "Romance" (1930)
10:00 am "The Informer" (1935)
12:00 pm "Kitty Foyle" (1940)
2:00 pm "Random Harvest" (1942)
4:15 pm "The Southerner" (1945)
6:00 pm "East of Eden" (1955)
Oscar Worthy Leaders:
8:00 pm "Gandhi" (1982)
11:30 pm "The Iron Lady" (2011)
1:30 am "Quo Vadis" (1951)
4:30 am "Conquest" (1937)
6:30 am "Juarez" (1939)
I was at 128 seen out of 302, and I've seen another 3 out of Thursday's 12 - "East of Eden", "Gandhi" and "The Iron Lady". SO now 131 seen out of 314 takes me to 41.7%.
THE PLOT: Three friends are asked to be bridesmaids at the wedding of a woman they used to ridicule back in high school.
AFTER: It seems kind of appropriate that this film ended up just two slots away from "That Awkward Moment", as they're equally terrible films, just one is about three terrible male characters and this one's about four terrible female characters. Well, we try to be fair here at the Movie Year, it wouldn't be right to just showcase the stupidity of one gender over the other. Remember, we're back to having TWO genders now, the President said so. JK - I support trans rights, even though the issue doesn't affect me at all, that doesn't mean it's not important to some other people, just trying to live their lives. I don't want to get into this issue here, it's got nothing to do with today's film, but then, there aren't really many films that ARE getting into this issue, are there? And without that then most people may not find a way to comprehend it, just saying. One of these days maybe a film will come along...
This film is about a wedding, and you apparently can't have a wedding without causing some resentments and awkward situations - a movie wedding, I mean. You can't make a wedding in a movie that runs perfectly smoothly and makes the couple and their families very happy, because who would go to see that? We want to see everything go horribly wrong, so we can be laughing at the misfortunes of people who are not ourselves, and then experience schadenfreude and thereby appreciate the events of our own lives, which obviously could be a whole lot worse than they are. I had a hand in planning both of my weddings, and my BFF (and BMF) told me, "Look, most things are going to go right, some things are bound to go wrong, but by the end of the day, you'll be married and if you're happy, then everything's going to be OK." Wise words, however they don't apply at all to movie weddings and movie bachelor/bachelorette parties.
For starters, the three friends - Regan, Katie and Gena - unite for Becky's wedding. Becky's the girl that everyone (including them) called "Pig Face" in high school and made fun of, and so they're resentful that Becky's getting married and THEY are all still single, that's, umm, petty and not really a good start to a movie, because it's a sign that worse things are coming if these three girls can't get beyond this, and they can't. Regan practically planned the whole wedding, which raises a NITPICK POINT, why is there ALSO a pro wedding planner hanging around? If Regan's doing everything, why do they need a wedding planner, and if there's a wedding planner, why does Regan have to step in? Ah, maybe she needs to be the focus of attention all the time, and this is her way of doing that. Oh, but it's going to get SO much worse...
The groom and his best man and grooms, of course, make plans to go to a NYC strip club (they shot this at Scores on West 28th St., don't ask me how I know this, but the place closed down, most likely during COVID) and the women are just planning to have a nice party at the hotel, only Katie arranges for her co-worker at the fancy clothing store to dress up like a cop and be a stripper at the women's party. It does NOT go well, as the stripper accidentally calls her by that horrible nickname, and she gets upset. But not too upset - the stripper is last seen leaving the room with the bride and that dangling little plot line does NOT get picked up again. It also makes no sense at all, so I don't know which is the worse sin, showing that on camera and it making no sense, or showing that and never following up - so I guess both things are bad.
The bride leaves and the three friends drink too much and/or do too much cocaine (ah, 2012...) so they all get very upset that Becky's getting married and they're all single. Two of them put on Becky's wedding dress (yes, both of them fit inside it, let's throw some more fat-shaming into the mix) and they accidentally tear it down the front, and this dress was CUSTOM-made for the bride. Guys, it's like the night before the wedding, everything's closed, how are we going to get this dress fixed AND cleaned before the ceremony? Well, maybe you should have thought of that before making fun of the fat person, you'll get no sympathy from me.
So this leads the girls on a cross-city alcohol and coke-fueled odyssey across the city to get the dress fixed, while ALSO crashing the guy's bachelor party at the strip club, and two of the girls trying to hook up with guys from the wedding party - Katie with too-nice pot dealer Joe, and Gena with her old flame Clyde, who wasn't there for her when she got pregnant and had to have an abortion, so yeah, that's all way too awkward. There's just no way to un-ring that bell and get those two back together or even on the same page, so no, we probably shouldn't even try, because that would be in VERY bad taste. Never, ever, ever should she even consider getting back together with the guy who left her hanging when their relationship led her to make a very difficult choice. Well, guess what...
Oh, it's still going to get SO much worse. I can only imagine the pressure that a filmmaker would have been under, making a bridesmaid-based comedy in 2012, one year after the tremendous success of "Bridesmaids", with Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph and Rose Byrne and Melissa McCarthy, and oh yeah, Rebel Wilson. Say, you don't suppose she got cast in "Bachelorette" because someone wanted to try and duplicate the unforeseen success of the raunchy film "Bridesmaids", do you? What, we can't get Kristen Wiig? OK, get me Kirsten Dunst instead, nobody's going to even care. Who else is available that week? Isla Fisher? OK, book her, she was in "Wedding Crashers", and get me Lizzy Caplan, who was in "The People We Hate at the Wedding", and while you're at it, call James Marsden, who was in "27 Dresses". We need as MANY people as possible who have been in other rom-coms about weddings...
Ugh, it gets even worse, because somehow Katie FORGETS to tell her friends that she went to FIT and studied fashion design, which means that - she COULD FIX the dress, if only they could find her a sewing machine and thread at 2 am in NYC. What, they closed all the sweatshops decades ago? Damn, what terrible luck. Think outside the box, girls, this is the city that NEVER sleeps, which means that there's a film shoot going on somewhere with an active costume department, or for that matter, if you're at Scores on 28th St. and the river, then the FIT campus is a few blocks away on 27th St., between 7th and 8th Ave. Right? And as an FIT alumni, maybe Katie even has her old ID, problem solved, but I guess movie over too soon, then.
Plus, Katie's too high AND too drunk, so she couldn't possibly run a sewing machine - BUT she's got time to go late-night swimming in the hotel pool with Joe, wait wasn't there a dress she was supposed to be fixing or something? Then she locks herself in the bathroom and OD's on Xanax, which is very not cool and causes a bunch of problems for everyone in the morning. Very inconsiderate.
Bulimia's not really a very good plot-point in a comedy, I mean I know it's a complicated issue related to women's body image issues and the pressures of society, but it's still at heart about women throwing up to lose weight, and honestly, not very funny at all. If you came here for a comedy movie and not a discussion of complex psychological medical conditions, you might find yourself disappointed, but hey, that's not just because of this one thing, the film's disappointing across the board. I mean, everywhere you look there are people being horrible to each other, and if that's how these people treat their FRIENDS then I'd hate to see what they do to their enemies.
Meanwhile, they all freak out, all the time, while ignoring the simplest solutions to problems. OK, so there's a small bloodstain on the dress (don't ask, I mean REALLY, don't ask) so is that a good enough reason for Regan to YELL at Becky right in her FACE to not worry about the bloodstain and go walk down the aisle? She has to hold her flower bouquet, right? So why not just nicely tell her to hold the flowers over the stain? Meanwhile, Regan's got a big vomit stain on HER dress (again, probably best if you don't ask) and she just walks around with it, but then, she's not the bride. Only, don't remind her that she's not the bride. OK, you know what, these people are all horrible and cringe and I'm done with them now and I never have to watch this film again.
This film is NOT streaming anywhere, and I think I know why. It was on that DVR that I turned in because it kept crashing, and maybe I should have taken that as a sign and removed it from my list the other way, by not watching it. But wait, you say, if it's not streaming and it's not on my DVR, how did i watch it? Yeah, you probably shouldn't ask that either.
Directed by: Leslye Headland (director of "Sleeping with Other People")
Also starring Kirsten Dunst (last seen in "Civil War'), Lizzy Caplan (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Isla Fisher (last heard in "Strays'), Rebel Wilson (last seen in "Pain & Gain"), Kyle Bornheimer (last seen in "You Again"), James Marsden (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Adam Scott (last seen in "Madame Web"), Paul Corning, Andrew Rannells (last heard in "Trolls Band Together"), Hayes MacArthur (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), Shauna Miles, Ann Dowd (last seen in "The Drop"), Ella Rae Peck (last seen in "Young Adult"), Arden Myrin (last seen in "Space Oddity"), Horatio Sanz (last seen in "Clifford the Big Red Dog"), Anna Rose Hopkins (last seen in "Shame"), Megan Neuringer, Leslie Meisel (last seen in "Kill Your Darlings"), Jenn Schatz, Beth Hoyt, Melissa Stephens, Chris Cardona (last seen in "Worth"), June Diane Raphael (last seen in "Blockers"), Candy Buckley, Erik Parian,
RATING: 3 out of 10 defaced yearbook photos
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