Movie Review: Bride Wars by Stuart Taylor
Bride Wars is a click flick. There’s nothing wrong with that; chick flicks are a legitimate form of theatrical entertainment and one should never be ashamed of one’s chick flickeredness! I’m not a woman, but as chick flicks are made for women, about women, to resonate with women, then this is an opportunity for us mantypes to dive into the insightful ocean of femininity. And frankly, after Bride Wars, I came up kicking and choking on bitter, salty waters, cursing my heterosexuality.
Our story features two women, best friends since childhood, who have grown up dreaming of the same perfect wedding: a June date at the plaza hotel. You see, one afternoon, when they were both little girls, they saw a beautiful bride at the famous hotel and the ideal has never left them since. Now women, Liv and Emma have both been proposed to by their bland, identikit boyfriends and at last they can bring their fantasy marriages to life. This can only be a recipe for extreme happiness, right?
Wrong. For you see, the Plaza accidentally booked both of their weddings on the same (and only available) June date! How can they both have their dream weddings and be each other’s maids of honour now? It becomes apparent that to solve this terrible, terrible situation, one of them must move their wedding date and venue, but which one? After all, Emma is only a teacher of limited means and has been saving since she was in her teens for this big day, while Liv’s parents are dead and the Plaza reminds her of the good old times, apparently. Neither of them are willing to concede – it’s too important an event!
Now, it seems to me, that the easiest part to change is the ‘June’ part. Does it really have to be in June? I haven’t been convinced. Maybe if they were both in the late stages of terminal cancer and would both be dead by July, I’d understand the frustration, but why doesn’t one of them try and get a late summer booking? Now, let’s not forget: I’m not a woman; the film makers have aimed these complex nuances at a female audience so forgive me if I don’t understand the subtleties at play here.
The ladies’ fiancés are buddies. They are also completely interchangeable and don’t appear to have a character beyond being ‘a man’ and ‘confused by the escalating tension between their ladies’. Unfortunately, Mr Emma lets slip that Liv has bought save-the-date cards and Emma, assuming that Liv is trying to snatch up the June date from under her, emails everyone telling them that her wedding is on June 6th. This is the fracture that breaks the friendship. Both cling on to June 6th with the tenacity of a crocodile’s chomp, and by the end of this film I certainly would rather take my chances with a gator than either of these ladies.
The situation gets worse for our heroines. You see, despite begging, bribing and cajoling their pool of ladyfriends, none of them want to take sides and they refuse to be bridesmaids for either wedding. Liv is forced to hire her male PA, Kevin, as her ‘mister of honour’ while Emma begs her horrible colleague (the woman from 3rd Rock From the Sun) to be her maid of honour. We’re still in Act 1 of this film and already it’s making me lose faith in women as a gender. If women are laughing and nodding along to this film then they agree that weddings are so important that women will rightly sacrifice their friendships and their weddings for them. That’s right: Emma and Liv are purposefully making their own weddings shit, discarding their bridesmaids and their best friends so that they can both have the perfect wedding. The perfect shit wedding. Much like Alien Vs Predator, whoever wins: we lose.
Thus ensues the second and most destructive Act of the film – the Bride War. Not content with the symmetrical sacrifices they have forced on themselves, they set out to ruin each other’s big days further. To what end, I am unclear, as there is no hint that either can back out of the much-coveted June 6th date – only 3 months away at the time of booking – so, really this is pure maliciousness. Men (and gay ladies), pay attention: weddings will make women an unstoppable force of darkness and destruction. If you don’t want to shatter the illusion that they are a perfect, untainted beauty: never, ever propose to your lady. And never enter the bathroom without knocking.
The destruction begins when Liv steals Emma’s favourite DJ away, so ’3rd Rock’ suggests that Emma scheme to get Liv too fat to fit into her Vera Wang wedding dress; Emma starts sending love cookies and cupcakes to Liv’s office, knowing that she’d believe it was from her beloved. A few scoffs later and the zip of her Wang becomes more reluctant to budge than Colonel Gaddafi. In revenge, Liv replaces Emma’s dance instructor with a madman who only seems to operate in fast-forward. Emma puts a joint engagement notice in the local paper, featuring a gorgeous picture of herself and an old chubby school photo of Liv and in retaliation, Liv spreads rumours that Liv is pregnant.
Is it me, or is Liv much less malicious than Emma? Emma is destroying Liv, while Liv only attempts harmless pranks. Are we meant to be rooting for Liv? It’s unclear. Part of me wonders if we’re meant to be rooting for the fiancés, hoping they’ll escape this maelstrom of viciousness and run away together, in a beautiful homosexual awakening. Or maybe this film is anti-marriage and we’re supposed to be rooting for the annihilation of an archaic, abused tradition. Or perhaps this film is an homage to The War of the Roses, a comedic noir in which there are no heroes and all players are reduced to a terrible ruination as an inevitable conclusion to their own spiteful vendettas. That’s a much better film, by the way – you should totally watch that.
The final week of the wedding arrives, and you’d be a fool not to realise that any bride-to-be will be working hard to make sure they look as beautiful as they possibly can in the run up to the wedding day. They wouldn’t, for example, wish to to look like an oompa-loompa. Liv, well aware of this, pulls a sneaky switcheroo at Emma’s spray tan appointment! But, zut alors, Emma switches Liv’s highlights for blue hair dye! A dye for a dye, eh Liv?
Sadly, Liv forgets she has blue hair and turns up the big client meeting in her job as big city lawyer. Oh no, I hear you cry, how will she solve this embarrassing predicament? Whatever you guessed, you were wrong: Liv, who is an educated businesswoman, decides the best course of action is to wrap her hair up in her blouse, thus presenting to her clients in just her bra. Yes, I know. I know. I’ll say it again – this is the film’s example of an educated business woman, a top lawyer in her firm.
Thus we reach the third and final act, in which the writers have realised that they need to start shoehorning Dei Ex Machina in order to reach the required climax. As the film makers aren’t daring enough to travel the path taken by The War of the Roses (seriously, give it a watch), we know that several end points must be met. Firstly, Emma and Liv must reconcile their differences and realise that their friendship is more important than anything else. Secondly, they can’t have terrible weddings – some compromise must be reached. And just as James Bond will inevitably thwart the villain and save the girl, ’tis the journey we are supposed to enjoy and not the destination. However, I will tell you in advance that in order to reach this destination, the film requires a third plot point to be achieved and we’ll see what that is in a second.
Both girls are thoroughly exhausted with the games they’ve been playing with each other. Their skin and hair has been replenished to its original splendour and only now in the final days are they realising how much they miss each others friendship. Mixed into this sad montage is the tipping point of Mr Emma, who is beyond frustration with the catty revenge games being played out by the ladies. He storms out of the apartment in anger. In the next scene, Emma runs into Liv’s brother, whom she helps with his suit fitting. They seem to chat easily and almost get a little too close in the tailors in a moment that would work well if this were one of the first scenes of a will-they-won’t-they romcom. These scenes have come out of absolutely nowhere in order to force the final “payoff” of this film.
But now it’s the wedding day! The ever-indecisive female friends appear to float between the two venues, unsure of where to sit, as our two feisty brides prepare themselves for the ceremony. Now, Liv had switched a CD of Emma’s intro music with her own devious recording, but in a final moment of truce, she asked Mr Liv to switch the CDs back. He doesn’t, mumbling that, ‘you’ll thank me later’ (this is never explained) and secretly throws the good CD away. As the two brides make their way to their own ceremonies, they spot each other in the grand hall and give each other a look that says, ‘good luck’. Ah, all is well.
But, no! For Emma’s bridal walk music changes – bizarrely – to a video of Emma dancing in a bikini! Emma is furious! She charges into Liv’s wedding and a full on smackdown commences. I don’t know if you’ve ever fought in a wedding dress – I have, and it’s really hard! Pouffs and ruffles everywhere, high heels getting caught in hosiery, immaculate hairdos… unimmaculating before your eyes! You get the idea. It’s not long before they both give up, exhausted. Then, out of nowhere, Emma blames her fiancé for everything! She says they aren’t right for each other and she dumps him right there at Liv’s wedding! WHAT. Oh, wait – he was mad at her for being so perpetually vengeful, and also Liv’s brother was nice to her once. Of course, it all makes sense all along. Right, carry on:
So, Emma is happy all of a sudden and walks Liv down the aisle for her wedding. It doesn’t matter that she’s just abandoned the wedding she saved her whole life to afford and that she fought with her best friend over for months, because friendship lasts forever! That’s the true lesson here, ladies – I see you nodding along.
Epilogue: One year later, Emma and Liv are hanging out. Emma is married to Liv’s brother and all is well with the world (aw!). But wait, Emma has news – she’s preggers! But wait – and you won’t believe this – Liv is also up the Hilary! And they are both due on March 3rd! Oh my goodness, inevitable sequel: Pregnancy Wars, in which the two former friends, in a jealous fury, try to give each other miscarriages. The film ends with them realising friendship is more important than babies, and Emma has an abortion, realising she didn’t want a baby after all.
If Bride Wars is really in tune with the modern woman, then we have much to fear from these modern women, who were scorn everything we thought they held dear – friends, family and their own partners – in order to attain shiny, expensive things. Even when they realise than some thing are more important than ‘stuffs’, they will already have destroyed many of the bonds that they spent a lifetime building. I would have loved it if the film had been a little bolder and taken the plot through to its inevitable conclusion: utter destruction. Both weddings ruined, both friendships ruined and utter, humiliating hubris only learned in the smoky inferno way beyond the point of no return. Their fiancés, disgusted at the turn of events, abandon their terrible, terrible ladyfriends and head of into the sunset, arm in arm, towards a loving, homosexual future.
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He says ‘you’ll thank me later’ because when Liv asked him to switch the hgood CD back, he thought it was another devious last-minute trick, and he thought he was doing the right thing. :)