Bride Wars
One of the things I always try to remember about critically approaching any movie I review is not to pre-judge. On occasion, as much as my common sense tells me one thing, my raging need to vent my spleen tells me something else. On very, very rare occasions, I hate to admit that I will mentally condemn (or blindly mentally gush over) a movie before I have even seen more than the teasiest of trailers.
The reason for this can sometimes be down to the director in charge, the subject matter or, as in the case of this little pearl, the stars. Being brutally honest, I approached this film with the same kind of thinly veiled disdain usually reserved for guiltless war criminals or those individuals that do unspeakable things to adorable little kittens.
From a purely personal perspective there are few actresses in film I look forward to less than Hudson or Hathaway, even on their own. Put them together in this outing, however, and I think I have honestly found a new low point in cinema.
Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) have been friends forever and when it transpires that their prospective wedding days collide, both at the same venue, the ‘war’ begins. This involves both of the brides to be orchestrating their own dirty tricks campaigns in order to ensnare the wedding day of their dreams, attempting to pummel their once lifelong friend into submission.
In even its most sophisticated moments, this movie is bland and regrettable. It highlights an ugly side of the lead roles in particular and, if we are to believe the ethos, the general belief from all apparently sane thinking women everywhere that the wedding is vastly more important than life itself.
You can accuse me of taking this film too seriously and you may be right. If this is purely just cinematic flotsam and we can be guaranteed we will never, ever see the likes of it again, then maybe we can just ignore it and hope it goes away. They said the same thing about Scary Movie too, and look what happened there.
There is no character substance, even from the leads. They are not even credited with so much as a surname, which given the subject matter, could easily have had at least as much mileage as some of the ideas presented before us. All of the male members of the cast are, without question, undeniably one-dimensional and barely even present, even when on-screen.
The story is predictable and nauseous. Rather than empathise with the characters, you want to soundly throttle every last one of them for being hateful, thoughtless, insipid, vacuous and selfish. There is no depth to any role in the entire film and you are repeatedly reminded that you came into this of your own free will, despite the fact that you told yourself not to do this in the first place, because you really did know better.
If this chick-flick is really what draws a female audience, then my faith in womankind will have been suitably rattled enough to make me re-investigate my opinion of the fairer sex. The next time I’m asked to review something like this, I will politely decline and instead, spend ninety minutes hitting myself in the face with a plastic tray.
