Review: Bride Wars (A Defense)
In Which Our Heroine Foolishly Defends the Film…
That’s right, I’m going to defend the movie. Look, I’m vehemently opposed to the insanity of the modern bridal industry. And I expected to hate this film. Really, I did. But perhaps because my expectations were low, I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the movie a lot more than I thought I would.
The only way to give a romantic comedy a fair shake, review-wise, is to accept that it is what it is. Many critics had trouble doing this. Yes, I too wish that the movie had been a vicious satire of bridezilla culture. But it wasn’t. It was a rom-com. Let’s all deal with that. Asking for something that you know that you will not get is an inherently unfair critical technique, and seems to have produced an incredible backlash in this case.
The simple plot is given away in the trailer: twenty-something lawyer Liv (Kate Hudson) and schoolteacher Emma (Anne Hathaway) have been best friends since childhood, united by their shared obsession with weddings. But when they become engaged and (gasp!) their weddings are accidentally scheduled on the same day, they go from best friends to frenemies. The movie chronicles their increasingly vicious rivalry to sabotage each other’s weddings, leading up to a sentimental denouement that praises the lasting quality of friendship.
Given the predictability of the genre, all that is fine. I even thought that the movie managed to be genuinely sweet by the end. It wasn’t perfect, however. Problem number one: neither Hudson nor Hathaway is a particularly gifted comedienne, in my humble opinion–though Hathaway is showing more promise than I would have guessed from her early endeavors. Both actresses did acceptable jobs, mind you, and brought enough to the movie to make it watchable. But neither managed to wring belly laughs out of a script that was mediocre at best.
Which leads to problem number two: the movie tries to have its (wedding?) cake and eat it too by being both a broad farce and a sentimental testament to friendship. That just doesn’t work. This fact is particularly disappointing because once the movie swerves in a sentimental direction, it actually gets somewhere in its attempts to be woman-friendly. Perhaps it if had kept a more moderate tone throughout, the story as a whole would have worked better.
Still, I did like that the more aggressive Liv (who proposed to her boyfriend) was rewarded, while doormat Emma had to learn how to stand up for herself in order to be happy. This quasi-feminist concession doesn’t make up for the problems in the rest of the movie, but it’s something. And of course, there’s the underlying assumption that a wedding is still the ultimate happy ending. This upsets many, but historically it’s built right into the genre. What seemed more unrealistic was the idea that if you find the right guy, he will actually enjoy helping you with the wedding planning. Unlikely!
On the positive side, Kristen Johnson is always funny, and I absolutely loved her turn as the Emma’s jaded co-worker. While Candice Bergen (who plays the wedding planner) can be pretty damned funny, she wasn’ti in this movie. Then again, she was essentially the bad guy for most of the film, and it was her job to play the “straight man” to the increasingly crazy brides-to-be. Finally, I thought all the male actors did great, understated jobs as, well…guys.
So why did everyone hate this movie so much? The most frequent accusation is that theme of bridezillas and catfights is just plain misogynist. And it can be–but on the other hand, I have personally witnessed a very smart, cool friend of mine become pathologically insane about her wedding. Her spate of madness included becoming enraged at her (now ex-) best friend for planning to use the same wedding venue a year later. Reality TV confirms that this insanity is not an isolated incident. So I don’t think the concept of bridezillas is particularly sexist. It’s an unfortunate reality, and perhaps feminists should be attacking the actual bridezillas, and not the movie.
And yes, the movie did indulge in some tired stereotypes of desperate women and their foibles. But more disturbing than the movie’s petty (and utterly predictable) sexism was the critics’ massively sexist response. Kate Hudson in particular is being lambasted like it’s going out of style. One critic even commented on her “coarsened” features. Agreed that Hudson’s not going to win an Oscar anytime soon, but attacking her looks doesn’t really constitute a review.
Frankly, the critics’ hateful response (12% is the latest reading on the rottentomatoes.com) seems all out of proportion to the movie’s quality, and that’s what is really sexist. I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but romantic comedies almost always get mediocre to low ratings, most likely because they’re considered “chick flicks.” But please tell me how the latest Indiana Jones flick, with its ludicrous plot and old-boy-approved lead, got a 78% approval rating on rottentomatoes.com? The movie was just plain awful! This decent, albeit flawed, movie beats that wretched, bloated piece of testosterone-driven drivel, hands down.
I’d give this movie a B overall for its mix of A and C moments. And if anyone has a problem with that, I have three little words: women in Hollywood. Actresses are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they take on movies like this one, people complain that they are not pushing boundaries. But women have so few good roles to choose from, even successful actresses simply cannot go around demanding Chekhov every time.
Hudson and Hathaway have already suffered enough from misogynist critics, and if this movie had flopped it would have “proved” that women can’t deliver at the box office. I’m glad it came in second at the box office last weekend. I hope it makes money again this weekend. I hope Hudson and Hathaway make a billion dollars on it. If equality requires that women make as much (or even half as much) for mediocre-to-good flicks as men do, so be it–the race is on.