Bachelorette (2012)
Directed by Leslye Headland
Three friends are asked to be bridesmaids at a wedding of a woman they used to ridicule back in high school.
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The performers do their best and there are some scenes that work but the overall piece is remarkably forgettable, reminding viewers of “Bridesmaids” and “The Hangover” while failing to match either in terms of laughs.
The panic to get the dress to the wedding on time is reminiscent of The Hangover and the mad dash to get the groom-to-be home from Vegas (think humor akin to the road-side tuxedo change).
Bachelorette belongs in the same category of raunchy adult comedies as The Hangover and Bridesmaids , and while it's plenty funny, it's also perhaps the one film in the bunch that also seems realistic.
While following the format of recent pre-wedding disaster films such as Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011) and The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009), Bachelorette is possibly better thought of as a darker and more painful spin on films such as Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (David Mirkin, 1997).
When the media labeled 2011's alternately hilarious, heartfelt " Bridesmaids " as a female version of 2009's " The Hangover ," it came as a lazy and sexist retort that insulted just how very good the Kristen Wiig-starring " Bridesmaids " was while giving the rancid, mean-spirited raunchfest that was " The Hangover " far more credit than it deserved.
Here's filmmakers' recipe: take elements from two popular movies (in this case, The Hangover and Bridemaids ), make the protagonists the most unbearable shrews imaginable, suck out anything that might be mistaken for humor, and throw lots of money at a few "name" actresses willing to sell their souls for the cause of replenishing their bank accounts.
So over the course of the night, the women indulge in drugs, alcohol, and sex (though not a lot of food, strangely, despite the proliferation of weed), through a plot that recalls the "into the night" genre of the 1980s, including films like After Hours, Something Wild, and, um, Into the Night.
This section is almost a female answer to the similarly crazed odyssey of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours.
"Bachelorette" is kind of like "Mean Girls" crossed with "After Hours" if overt funny was replaced with character insights.
…setup, nor is it the farcical “After Hours”-esque plot that ensues after the coked-up Regan and Katie accidentally destroy Becky’s wedding dress and have to get it replaced or restored before morning.
When the three women accidentally rip the bride's gown while using it as a prop for a vicious Facebook photo, "Bachelorette" becomes a sort of "After Hours" tour of the decadent city, as the friends frantically search for a way to repair or replace the dress before the wedding the next morning.
Headland is clearly trying to channel the spirit of John Hughes (perhaps a coked-up and promiscuous John Hughes), but her discursive, self-involved, shamelessly New Yorky characters also suggest the films of Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan” and “The Last Days of Disco”).
His work with Björk, in particular, in videos like “Bachelorette,” “Human Behaviour” and “Isobel,” have an unearthly, quivering quality reminiscent of the early days of filmmaking, the kind of thing Georges Méliès might have done if he were working today.