Reinforcing All The Worst Of Women, Bride Wars Disappoints Even Fans Of Anne Hathaway.

The Good: Very easy to watch, Anne Hathaway dancing, Moments of humor/resolution
The Bad: Terribly predictable, Conflict makes little to no sense, Not great acting, Not all that funny.
The Basics: Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson give a PG bland performance in Bride Wars which turns the clock back on feminist progress by illustrating brides-to-be as utter savages.

There is a joke on Family Guy, back when it was edgy and pulled no punches, where the Griffin family was watching a preview for a movie on Lifetime and the slogan was presented as: "Lifetime: Television for idiots." Tonight, as I sat through Bride Wars, a film that is shown in (more or less) its entirety in the preview trailers, I sat thinking the same thing. This film is not designed to appeal to women, it is designed to appeal to simpletons. Ironically, in a theater full of teens, tweens and very few women who were under forty, I discovered I was not alone. No, I was not the only one not laughing. In fact, there were more laughs (albeit from the tween "chick" crowd) during the preview trailer for Confessions Of A Shopaholic than there were during the entire screening of Bride Wars.

And while some might find me generally sour on romantic comedies of late, I went into Bride Wars excited. In fact, I braved a snow storm tonight to go see it. I went, largely, because of costar Anne Hathaway. I am a big fan of her work (in general) and I also am making plans for my own impending wedding. I suspect that I would have enjoyed Rachel Getting Married more than Bride Wars. As it is, this is a rather poor outing for all concerned and one that it is very easy to not recommend to any audience.

Liv and Emma have been best friends since they were young children. By age eight, they had fallen in love with weddings and played dress up with Liv as the bride and Emma as a groom. Having peeked in on a wedding at the Plaza Hotel, both girls have desired nothing more than to be married at the Plaza Hotel in June. When Emma's boyfriend of ten years, Fletcher, proposes, Liv corners her boyfriend, Nate, into proposing to her. Both young women enlist Marion St. Claire to plan their wedding and as luck would have it, there are two dates in June where she can get them into the Plaza Hotel.

However, an administrative error puts both Liv and Emma's wedding on the same day, as opposed to the two weeks apart they had originally planned. This sparks an argument between Liv and Emma over who must cede their day when the woman who got Emma's intended date refuses to deal. As a result, Emma and Liv go to war with one another, escalating pranks as they try to pressure the other into relinquishing the hotel and the date so the one might have the dream wedding at the expense of the other.

And yes, this is where the movie takes a turn for the completely stupid and predictable. It is a terribly unfunny romantic comedy for giggling girls for whom the wedding day truly is everything in their life. But more than that, Bride Wars annoyingly reinforces the age-old stereotype that women are conniving, backstabbing, shrews who will stop at nothing to get their way. And yes, Bride Wars is about reinforcing the lack of reason society projects against women. The men in the film ask (not nearly soon enough for my liking) "Why can't we have a double wedding?" And the answers Emma and Liv come up with are far from satisfactory.

Bride Wars reinforces the thin Hollywood ideal of women as well as the notion that the wedding day is so important that the perfect garment takes priority over the individual. Yes, we learn that the Vera Wang does not change for the woman, she must change for the dress. Bride Wars lacks any real humor about the events and instead becomes a stupid prank movie that has little real difference to the old college frat prank movies of the early '80s. Two women go to war and neither is terribly likable after about five minutes of their fight beginning.

The thing is, in addition to reinforcing old, pre-Feminist ideals of women and women's behavior around weddings, Bride Wars is just terribly predictable, resulting in a low amount of entertainment value. The plot is utterly predictable. From the moment that Emma and Liv discover that Liv is going to be proposed to, the seasoned viewer knows Emma will be proposed to first and throughout the movie, all of the reversals were either completely unsurprising or were ruined by their presence in the film's trailer.

But more than that, the jokes fall flat - especially when one considers that the funniest potential jokes in the movie were shown in the trailer - the characters are underdeveloped and the source of the conflict makes no real sense given the nature of the best friends. Here are two women who practiced getting married constantly with one another, why is it truly such a bad thing to make the day a double wedding?

Candice Bergen - who appears as wedding planner Marion St. Claire - provides voice-overs that are utterly unnecessary and state the obvious to viewers who are generally smarter than the film's protagonists. Bergen is underused and, in fact, seems stiff in her brief time on-screen in the movie. A lot of the acting is stiff, awkward or just plain bad, though John Pankow and Steve Howey manage to be human at moments when the film desperately needs something emotionally real.

As for Anne Hathaway, viewers do get the simple pleasure of watching Anne Hathaway essentially do a pole dance, but it is still not enough to justify the ticket price. Hathaway is entertaining and beautiful in her flawless way that has made her one of today's leading ladies. The problem is, Hathaway plays Emma like she plays many of her characters: smart and possessing a quiet strength. Emma gets rolled over by other characters, like Deb and Liv. Hathaway fails to sell the viewer on this, though. Because she is articulate and appears so together, the viewer is left wondering why her character is not being more reasonable.

I was surprised to discover that the only film I had seen Kate Hudson in before this was Almost Famous and she seems to do well as Liv. Hudson is forceful, angry and is able to connect early in the film with the audience as Liv. Still, it seems odd that a character so passionate and angry would be characterized as someone who never cries. Hudson plays the strength well.

At the end of the night, though, this is a painful to watch film and the moments that have actual messages (noteworthy is the concept of marrying someone who will be different in ten years) come far too late and far too long after the viewer has stopped caring. For a better wedding film, well, there's always Rachel Getting Married!

For works featuring Anne Hathaway, please check out my reviews of:
Love And Other Drugs
Family Guy Presents: It's A Trap!
Alice In Wonderland
Valentine's Day
Twelfth Night Soundtrack
Rachel Getting Married
Passengers
Hoodwinked!
The Princess Diaries

3.5/10

For other movie reviews, please be sure to check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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Even If The Trailers Hadn't Been So Revealing, Letters To Juliet Would Still Suck.

The Good: Cinematography
The Bad: Lame character work, Terrible plot, Predictability, Overbearing soundtrack, Stiff acting.
The Basics: Dreadfully dull, poorly presented and utterly unimaginative, Letters To Juliet is a big cinematic splat which does not deserve the time or attention of viewers.


I'll admit it: sometimes, I go to a movie screening with a prejudice about a film. Yes, it happens to the best of us and the truth is, it happened to me recently. The only surprise for me was that I wasn't prejudiced enough! Allow me to explain. The film is Letters To Juliet and I had seen the preview for it at least four times in the course of seeing other movies in the recent past. If you have not seen the preview trailer, avoid it at all costs: the entire movie is in the trailer. I don't just mean that metaphorically; the last scenes of the film are featured surprisingly heavily in the preview trailer. I picked that up right away and figured Letters To Juliet would just be a cheap knockoff of Amanda Seyfried's last romantic film, Dear John (click here for that review!) and I was already whittling a slot for a below average film in my listings.

But no, after joining a slew of other people for a free Mother's Day showing of the film, I can't find anything redeeming about this. This film deserves to be righteously panned. What I hadn't counted on in seeing the preview trailer was that the filler (i.e. the rest of the movie not contained in the trailer) would contain not just less inspired pieces of filmmaking, but actually vastly worse dialogue, characterization, acting and plot development. Letters To Juliet is arguably the most soulless romance movie I have ever seen and even if I had not seen the preview trailer I - like anyone with an intelligence above that of a second grade American student - would have been able to call the end. This might be the attempt on the part of the studios to offer an alternative to the big-budget special effects films, but, alas, it is quite simply not good.

Sophie is excited beyond belief for her impending wedding and as the big day approaches for the fact-checker, she and her fiance do a pre-wedding honeymoon to Verona. Her fiance, Victor, has different ideas about the pre-honeymoon as he is a restaurateur whose big opening is coming in the days following the wedding. On the trip, as Sophie longs to visit museums and concerts and other cultural events, Victor packs his days with meeting distributors, vintners and chefs who give him secrets to making his restaurant a success. So, while lonely and wandering in Verona, Sophie comes across the courtyard of Juliet and finds women there writing to Juliet about their Romeos. She follows a woman at the end of the day to a nearby building where four women respond to the letters to Juliet. While investigating the letter-writing phenomenon, Sophie uncovers a letter that is over fifty years old and she decides she wants to respond to it.

Her response brings Charlie Wyman into Sophie's life. Charlie is not thrilled about the response that his grandmother, Claire received and he arrives to chastise Sophie. However, Sophie becomes intrigued and soon she, Claire and Charlie are on a road trip to find Claire's long lost Lorenzo. Along the way predictability ensues and Sophie and Charlie come to realize something about themselves and each other which changes their futures.

Letters To Juliet is not only insanely predictable, but it is set up such that it is utterly unpleasant. Sophie is neglected by Victor from the very start and his enthusiasm for his work is so consuming that he expresses no real passion for anything or anyone else. Victor is not a relationship type guy. He's not even trying to balance his work and his love. Instead, he is only passionate about his work. He does not listen to Sophie, he does not express common interests, he is singularly focused on his work and his own life. So, right off the bat, the viewer sits and wonders, "Why is Sophie marrying this guy?" It's not even a casual question, it is a pain-in-the-gut, this-confounds-me-beyond-suspension-of-disbelief ache that comes with watching the movie. This isn't the 1700s, no one is forcing Sophie to marry a jerk and, frankly, with Sophie looking like the current societal ideal, her options are pretty much unlimited. So the attraction to Victor is lost on the viewer.

So, when Charlie enters the film and is pretty much the anti-Victor, the movie takes a turn into Obviousville that ought to cost Jose Rivera and Tim Sullivan their WGA memberships for writing this piece. The writing is so formulaic that the only audience this PG script is likely to amuse are those not old enough to get into films with a harder rating. Charlie is predictably likable in all the ways one might expect following Victor's stiffness and unlikability. Similarly, Claire becomes an archetype which one might have hoped would have been Vanessa Redgrave's swan song. Instead, Redgrave (who is not the recently deceased Redgrave, that was Lynn) is essentially replaying her role from Cradle Will Rock. This is not a leap for Redgrave and the performance seems like she is doing her best with a character type that has become increasingly common in recent years: the revitalized elder.

In fact, much of the acting "reads" as performers trying their best to work with a script that is in all ways unimpressive. Sophie is not a likable protagonist because the viewer spends far too much time wondering why she doesn't open her mouth and stand up for herself, first with her boss then with Victor. Amanda Seyfried plays the part like she's unsure how to not be a strong woman and actually vocalize her discomfort. Her jaw muscles clench and the viewer is forced to accept that this is Seyfried biting her tongue as opposed to Sophie. After all, if Sophie had spent her life clenching thus, her jaw muscles would be far more defined.

Christopher Egan, who plays Charlie is exactly the type of Hollywood good-looking guy that makes films like Letters To Juliet interminable to watch. This is the type of movie most people will watch and go "Wah wah! You're good looking, employed at an awesome job, what do you truly have to complain about?!" And seriously, the casting for this film was abysmal and targeted toward the skinny chick demographic. All of the women and girls shown visiting Juliet's balcony and writing letters to her are stick thin and Hollywood beautiful. This suggests one of three things: 1. The casting was utterly imaginative, 2. Fat chicks don't go crying to Juliet when their relationships have problems, or 3. Fat chicks need not apply. Gosh, I hope the message of the movie is #2 because otherwise this is yet another film in a long cinematic tradition of whiny stick thin girls who expect others to solve their problems while maintaining an almost unobtainable feminine ideal.

The only acting that stands out as notable or truly natural was that of Gael Garcia Bernal, who played Victor. Bernal seems like a workaholic who is pursuing his own agenda at the cost of all else. He is able to play a complete jerk and make it seem natural. His performance in Babel not inspiring me to recollect him, we assume this is the product of good acting.

Director Gary Winick made a good choice with the cinematographer for Letters To Juliet as the film looks good. The movie could be a travelogue for Italy, but truly there is nothing else. Letters To Juliet is not a smart chick flick; it embodies much of what is wrong with the genre and with stereotypes about women today.

And on a side note, those who are driven will find this to be a terrible movie to take a date to as the movie is utterly uncomfortable in its portrayal of workaholics. Contrary to what the film might suggest, workaholics are not all passionless people so focused on their own goals that they do not want love in their life. It's hard to suggest that, though, when watching Letters To Juliet, which might well ruin more relationships than it creates. Fortunately, my partner is smart enough to differentiate between Victor's insensitivity and my work focus: do you truly want to take the chance your partner might not be able to make the distinction?

For other romantic movies, please check out my reviews of:
Remember Me
Twilight
Strawberry And Chocolate

1/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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