Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
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.
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