Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Bride Wars

When I first began reading about the plot of Bride Wars, I was intrigued. It seemed like a cute little movie that was perfect for a Girls’ Night out. In fact I had hoped to go with my friends to see it, until I started hearing from people who had already seen it. My mother thought it was great, which for me is not a good sign for a movie, but I had heard negative reviews from other people, but felt like I needed to see it on my own and form my own opinions. I should have listened to other people.
Bride Wars tells the story of 2 lifelong friends in New York City, Liv (Kate Hudson), an attorney, and Emma (Anne Hathaway), a schoolteacher. These two are both in serious relationships, and one day while going through Liv’s closet, the girls find a box from Tiffany’s and without opening it assume that Liv’s boyfriend, Nate, will propose and she tells everyone that she is already engaged, even though he hasn’t proposed yet. While waiting for Nate to propose, Fletcher, Emma’s boyfriend proposes. This leads Liv to confront Nate about why he hasn’t proposed, which he does after the confrontation. Now that they are both happily engaged, they meet with their dream wedding planner, Marion St. Clair (Candace Bergen) and she announces that she has availability for weddings at the Plaza in June, which is a dream that the two friends share. They both pick different dates, since they are each other’s maids of honor. However, due to a scheduling mishap their weddings are booked for the same day. Neither wants to give up their dates, and they begin sabotaging each other and their weddings.
If this was supposed to be a movie about friendship and how true friendships always last, then I fear for the people who believe that. If this movie has one message it is that in this world you can only trust yourself and to never open up to anyone because you never know when a moment of weakness where you share something will come back to haunt you.
However, I have more problems with the movie than just it crap-tastic depiction of lifelong friendship. The movie didn’t bother to delve any deeper than the traditional bride mentality that is accepted as the norm. I mean this movie is basically about tow really big and expensive temper tantrums, where it is all about the bride and no one else matters. If the superficial emotions that are portrayed in this film were the only problem, it might be surmountable, but that isn’t the only problem,
There were a lot of actors in this movie, but I don’t feel like anyone was really acting. I had the same problem with Must Love Dogs. I feel that the script was so superficial that the actors didn’t really care about their characters. The film should have been called “Really Expensive Puff Piece and We’re Just Paying These People To Show Up.”
This wasn’t a good movie. There is no way around the fact. The plot was horrible, the characters were flat, and if there was any acting that occurred in this film, then it escaped me. I give it a -13. Just a tip for all you brides out there, NEVER ACT LIKE THESE WOMEN!

2 comments:

jbodster said...

My biggest issue with the movie was that it was, well, pointless. SO WHAT if their weddings were for the same day - it's not like only one of them could get married on that date. There were spots for both of them. So I don't get why they had to try to sabotage each other's wedding.

Dr. Worm said...

Yeah, I'd agree that it's a major problem when your characters just embody stereotypes rather than complicating them.

Speaking of which, Anne Hathaway is *so* much cuter than Kate Hudson.