Film

Rachel got married—so why is Anne Hathaway in another movie about nuptials, this one as punishingly unfunny as Jonathan Demme’s film was relentlessly shrieky? As in 27 Dresses, last January’s altar-frenzied comedy from Fox, Bride Wars wants to have its five-tiered cake and eat it too, making toothless jokes about the absurdity of the multibillion dollar wedding industry while never letting us forget that no woman is complete without one. And, of course, no woman is complete without her BFF, if only so that relationship can be destroyed for yuks. Cue wearying catfighting schemes between schoolteacher Emma (Hathaway) and lawyer Liv (Hudson), inseparable for 20 years but now committed to a campaign of humiliating each other after a mix-up books their weddings at the Plaza on the same day.

Cowritten by Casey Wilson, a recent cast addition to SNL whose comedic gifts appear limited to performing, Bride Wars will leave you feeling pummeled by the time of sabotage by hair dye. Allow me to suggest this covert strategy to escape further mental harm: Imagine Bride Wars as a rejoinder to the passage of Prop 8. After all, Emma and Liv’s nondescript fiancés are entirely superfluous; when the two women walk down the aisle, they look like they’re marrying each other (a nod to the ending of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?). Their shared wedding date falls in June, Gay Pride Month. Several scenes were filmed in Massachusetts—if Liv and Emma have any sense, the bridezillas will elope to the state that will legally pronounce them wife and wife.