On one hand, what we get is some genuinely enjoyable movies this year, such as Drag Me To Hell and Red Cliff, and on the other hand we got absolute rubbish such as this filth and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. If this is a good thing, then I will simply say that it is not as bad as Transformers, but saying that I think I was too easy on that film because it is just terrible. Nonetheless, the serving is not the robust beast that is Transformers, but instead the salad, vegetarian meal that is Bride Wars, and never was that metaphor more apt. Actually, it might be too apt, because if you were to compare Bride Wars to a meal (rich coming from me), it would probably be the sole of a fisherman's leather boot. As in, it is completely tastless, is rough around the edges, and smells horrible. Anyway, context, context, context, Bride Wars is this film with an absolutely brilliant setup in which two young girls meet in a hotel, one being poor and the other growing up without parents, and they both witness a wedding, and the both grow up dreaming about weddings and getting married to the perfect man. Now, I may not be of the female of the species, but I want someone to actually respond to my post here and correct me and tell me that Bride Wars is an accurate depiction of women and that they themselves like the protagonists, have spent their entire life preparing for a wedding. One of the worst things about this film is the fact that this is a film which all girls between the ages of eight and thirteen are bound to see, and even if they do not identify with the protagonists' wish for weddings, they will become brainwashed into thinking that this is what they should be thinking about and growing up way too soon. Kids, enjoy your childhood while you have it. It is already getting shorter with teenagers now localing pubs and whatnot (I should know), the last thing we need is an eight year old admiring wedding dresses instead of playing with their toys. It is such a rotten film because of this kind of message. I'm not saying getting married is a bad thing, I'm just saying that no one should be forced into this kind of thinking. Bride Wars is like that kid amongst a group of friends who is effectively a bully and through peer pressure makes you feel bad for doing things you don't want to. It is a movie like a drug dealer forcing heroin upon you, regardless of the fact you want to do it or not. A fair enough rant, but there's more. The acting is completely vacuous and terrible, the gags and the dialogue are simply not funny, and it is quite frankly a horribly structured film. Manhola Dargis of The New York Times puts it brillaintly when she wrote that she wondered what would have become of the film if they had have explored the lesbian subtext suggested at the beginning of the film. Now that would have been an interesting film. Get new writers for re-writes to change the jokes and dialogues so that not only do we have a comedy, we have a brilliant satire on an often boring genre and a big two fingers up to the New Right establishment in America. That would be fantastic. But it's not. It's propaganda "the family, marriage, no children or sex before marraige et al." The best things about Bride Wars are the fact that it is only about eighty minutes long and the fact that there is an unexpected twist at the end, probably because of what has preceded was so bad, but even still the manage to flip the tortoise belly up in the last scene. All in all, a bad, bad film. Screw you Kate Hudson!
The Thin White Dude's Prognosis - 1.5/10
Watch Dr Mark Kermode's review of this film on YouTube.
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