I.. feel cheated.
So here we have what’s been advertised as The Hangover for women. I’m thinking it’s gonna be all hilarious and raunchy. Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph and Jon Hamm and Melissa McCarthy and Rose Byrne and those girls from The Office and Reno 911! are there.
LIES I TELL YOU.
The first bit of it’s fine. The sex montage was actually funny. The toasting at the bridal shower was a little tiresome; like a lot of Kristin Wiig’s sketches on SNL. Actually, it was like Penelope! That one where she and Neil Patrick Harris kept trying to top each other’s topping. But at first, I sort of sympathized with Wiig’s Annie a little. The pre-dress shopping lunch was… well, tedious. I wanted to slap Rose Byrne’s smug face and tell her to go back to being British and singing pop songs about he asshole. Dress-shopping itself was… well, also tiresome. But it was gross for a minute or two, and I guess that’s what they meant by The Hangover for women. It — GASP — actually involved excrament jokes. For all of those two minutes.
It just sort of made me sad from there. Sad because for a while I liked the Scottish cop, at least, and I think he had sort of a right to be pissed that she just screwed and ran, ’cause that’s not cool when guys do it or when girls do it, you should at least… I don’t know, say something better than “gotta go bye.” But then he was an asshole too. The bit on the airplane was tiresome, and this could just be because I have a bad association with airplane humor since Due Date was so outrageously bad. The bridal shower was painful. The… everything was painful.
This was being touted as a comedy about female friendships. (Is that why the groom was only seen at the engagement party and the wedding and never so much as spoke? Like he may as well have been a blow-up doll there to accessorize with her on her “special day,” like it wasn’t supposed to be special for both of them, like a wedding is just a big party for a woman to dress up and eat cake and then go off to birth children or something, like he had absolutely no involvement in the wedding at all, of course he didn’t, what would men know about weddings? That’s woman’s work!) But what kind of message does it send that the central female friendships are either crumbling due to petty, vindictive, annoying jealousy or based strictly on having husbands that are friends and a similar affinity for pretty material goods? Where the two “rivals” get so jealous of each other that they ruin everything, almost? Where the big reveal consists of the bride going I don’t want all this fancy crap! Oh yeah, btw, how are you doing? And best friend going, in return, I’m fine. All’s forgiven, even though an indeterminate but short period of time ago, you were pissed ’cause your friend was being a shallow bitch? And you, in turn, were being a vindictive bitch?
Is it possible to make movies about female friendships that don’t involve vindictive bitchiness? That don’t involve a screaming match? That don’t involve the teary-eyed confession and forgiveness session? At least Melissa McCarthy’s Megan seemed to have her head on straight most of the time. Sure, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a chick flick with projectile vomiting and diarrhea, but it’s still a chick flick.
In short, HOW ARE OUR DAUGHTERS GOING TO GROW UP BELIEVING THAT THEY CAN HAVE POSITIVE FRIENDSHIPS THAT DON’T INVOLVE STUFF AND DON’T UNRAVEL DUE TO JEALOUS CATTINESS?
Oh yeah. They can just immerse themselves in all things Jossy and empowering.
–your fangirl heroine
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