Movie Review: Bachelorette

‘What is the purpose of such films’, I often think to myself when I watch movies like Bachelorette. Do movies simply get made these days because of the success of similar vehicles a season before (Bridesmaids obviously, in this case)? There is really no reason for this film to exist, except to plump up Kirsten Dunst’s account so she can act in sci fi dystopias like the upcoming Upside Down. Even typing this review seems surreal to me. I thought movie reviewing was a little more dignified than that.

It’s not that Bachelorette isn’t funny. It is at times, when one of the drunken girls calls an elevator a ‘room that is moving’. Sometimes women need a movie where they can just stare at some other women (pretty and slim, in Burberry coats and with Chanel bags) and both Isla Fisher and Kirsten Dunst provide that eye fodder here. But somehow Bachelorette doesn’t deliver neither on the entertainment nor the gross out promise, and I was just left with this icky feeling inside, like the dude on the plane to whom the character of Lizzy Caplan explained her ‘blow job theory’ (sex blackmail 101) in gory, smelly detail – and then never put out!

There is no one likeable in Bachelorette. How did writer/director Leslye Headland want to engage an audience with such a lucid lot of characters is a mystery. Even the innocent and innocuous bride-to-be Becky (Rebel Wilson) is somehow despicable. Where Bridesmaids was relatable and close to heart (even when it was over the top), Bachelorette is simply sci fi of wedding movies. I mean, how many women in their thirties walk around with baby powder bottles full of cocaine wearing just a T-shirt and heels? It looks to me that Bachelorette tried to ride on the tidal wave of Bridesmaids success without actually recognizing the immense writing talent behind Kristen Wiig’s film and the kick-ass actress-comedians who took part in it.

Will I bother to tell you the plot? Becky aka Pig Face is getting married (despite being ‘fat’ and just generally a ‘loser’). She is the first to become a Mrs. out of a bunch of high school nasty-nice bitches: Regan (Kirsten Dunst, looking good); Gena (Lizzy Caplan, in a very realistic junky mode); and Katie (Isla Fisher, actually enjoyable). The three girls used to bully Becky in school and haven’t made much progress since then. Their lives are so miserable they get so high they torture the wedding dress and have to spend a frantic night trying to reverse it back to its virginal state. The developments around them seem to have been written so that the audience has to endure-enjoy the incessant ejaculations of a maximum variety of bodily fluids, such as tears, vomit, urine, semen, etc. There is a strip club with surprisingly unfit strippers (their fat hanging out and all which you can touch-poke for merely 200 bucks).

Bachelorette kind of loses it when Regan is asked to lick a sidewalk, where I was just expecting her to puke all over the place. But I actually don’t think it’s worse than some of the so-called male movies. Nor did I find it all that offensive, despite all the cursing. What was offensive to me was that, sort of like Magic Mike, out of the blue it raised heavy issues like body image, self-hatred, abortion and bulimia – all in the midst of idiotic set ups, as if to add ‘drama’ to the proceedings. But it rang so false and cheap that all the flaws of the movie stood out even more. Bachelorette is just stupid. And comedy it is not.

Verdict: Because Bachelorette is so full of intoxicated people who aren’t bright to begin with perhaps its value can be redeemed by an equally intoxicated audience. Luckily we won’t be seeing them in the cinema because hopefully word of mouth will do the trick.