“Why is January suddenly the month of lame chick-flick romantic comedies about weddings?,” asks Marshall Fine in his review of Bride Wars on Hollywood and Fine.
Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway in Bride Wars
“You’ve got to wonder about the kind of post-feminist message these movies send: that a woman ain’t nothin’ ‘less she can snag herself a man. Not to mention the casual glorification of conspicuous consumption at a level of excess that seems appropriate only for a big-budget network game show.
“Perhaps my complaints about the retrograde sexual politics of these films would be less pointed if the movies were actually entertaining. In that regard, Bride Wars is particularly dismal: They should put up signs at the multiplexes whose screens this movie will be clogging, saying, ‘CAUTION: LAUGH-FREE ZONE.’
“In other words, I wouldn’t give a rat’s behind about the movie’s message if the movie itself wasn’t so abysmally flat. But Bride Wars couldn’t find a joke if it was pinned to the front of its exorbitantly priced Vera Wang bridal gown.
“It’s alarming, in fact, how unfunny Hudson is. And the mix of overbearing bangs and eye make-up that looks like it was applied with a spray-gun with the nozzle set wide open makes her seem hardened and brittle next to the creamy, fresh-faced Hathaway. Hathaway here is good, despite bad material — but this film calls into question whether Hudson can, in fact, act.
“Here’s how humor-challenged the script is: Even Candice Bergen isn’t funny. And she was able to wring laughs out of the weak-tea lines she was given in both The Women and Sex and the City — The Movie. Nobody does haughty and dismissive with more comic flair these days than Bergen. But here? Nothing.
“Bride Wars panders to a female audience while insulting its taste and intelligence at the same time. RSVP regrets only.”
Wells to Fine: Taste and intelligence?
