Midway through Bride Wars there is a scene where a lone tear falls down Kate Hudson’s cheek. That one tear tells a much larger story than all of Bride Wars. In that one tear is Kate Hudson’s career and it goes all the way back to Almost Famous, when William Miller told Penny Lane she had been sold to “Humble Pie for fifty bucks and a case of beer.” A tear rolled down Hudson’s cheek at that moment as well, and outside of Almost Famous and my moderate liking of How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days I imagine Kate Hudson looks back at a series of missteps and wonders how she went from an Oscar nominated actress in a Cameron Crowe film to a B-list actress performing alongside Dane Cook and following that up with what is likely to be Anne Hathaway’s last career misstep as she has finally found her footing. Bride Wars is an embarrassment of awful as it attempts to mock the whole idea of lavish weddings and landing Mr. Right all while dwelling in that world and praising the very subject they wish to satirize.
Over the course of the 88 minutes and 55 seconds that makes up Bride Wars you will not only be witness to the unfunny pratfalls featured in the trailer, but the testosterone infused voiceover of Candice Bergen playing the highly sought after wedding planner Marion St. Claire. Her voice opens the film to tell us about all the wonders of getting married and what a dream it is for all girls. You know – the usual. However, the husky vocals of Bergen make getting a root canal sound more appealing and begin the immediate cringe factor. Bergen is a talent in a lot of areas, but voice work is not one of them.
St. Claire ultimately becomes the wedding planner for Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway), lifelong best friends who share the dream of a June wedding at the Plaza. Of course, being long admirers of St. Claire they go in for a joint meeting, get their dates and are on their way. But wait! Stop the press! There has been a mix-up and New York City’s best wedding planner just scheduled their weddings on the exact same day! This means WAR! A BRIDE WAR! Not on the planner mind you, but on each other! It’s time to dye hair blue and sabotage spray tan facilities. On top of that director Gary Winick (13 Going on 30) tries to convince us that 80-pound Kate Hudson will actually begin porking out on sweets so as not to fit into her Vera Wang. A slew of other calamities ensue that will have you shaking your head in disbelief as you begin to wonder how they managed to wrangle Anne Hathaway into a seedy matrimonial Kate Hudson effort.
Ugh, how weird is that? Stereotyping Kate Hudson into a category? It’s true, however, Hudson’s choice in films have led her here, which is undoubtedly the bottom of the barrel, or at least I am assuming since I never saw My Best Friend’s Girl. However, she may be digging herself out quickly with an upcoming role in Rob Marshall’s Nine, and based on her lifeless and uninspiring performance here she too may have realized that this is not what she expected she would be doing nine years after the release of Almost Famous.
Hathaway isn’t exactly “better” as much as she is just Anne Hathaway in a throw-away role. To judge it on any real level would almost be an insult, since I can’t imagine Hathaway pining over this performance as much as she did for Rachel Getting Married or even Get Smart, a film in which I really think she stepped out of the shadows and into woman-hood as much as Rachel opened the eyes of many folks to Hathaway’s potential.
Had this film been made back in the late ’30s and into the ’40s it would have been far more tongue-in-cheek as ’40s-style raucous comedies had a way of blending insanity into melodrama with a relative ease – such as the final “I love you” in Bringing Up Baby. A good comparison would be the awful attempt at remaking The Women in 2008 based on the 1939 Joan Crawford feature. Bride Wars mixes the loving and caring Emma with the materialistic Liv in a Battle Royale, but the mixture is tainted by the paper thin character created for Hudson and the far deeper Emma. Audiences will have a terrible time connecting with either character; even though one may lean more into Emma’s corner, simply because Liv is a bitch no one would really believe anyone is friends with.
As if I had to say it, stay away from this movie. Perhaps the female audience will get attached to the notion of a wedding in general, but doesn’t that just feed the stereotype this film is apparently attempting to satire? Hmmm, wrap your head around that one.
