“I don’t know how much time I spent between yesterday and today trying to figure out the best way to squish in Bachelorette with Celeste and Jesse Forever. I could wait til late afternoon and then get them in rapid succession, but that got me home a lil later than I’d have liked. Or I could have gone to an early one at one theater and then slightly later at another, but I’d have a bit too long of a break and not get home much earlier than option one. I took a third option. Early showing of C + J, then one of Bachelorette that overlapped a little, so I’d end up missing the previews and maybe a bit of the set up. I may have ended up missing a little more than I’d anticipated.
By the time I clumsily walked into the theater, and of course had to walk past the entire audience to get to the more open seating area, I was just in time for the action to start to pick up. I missed most of what’s in the trailer, the announcement and planning and rehearsal dinner, and got there just after the bride had left her bridesmaids to their shenanigans. It didnt take me long to figure out what was what, but I am incredibly incredibly sad I missed Andrew Rannell’s stripper scene.
Inevitably, people are gonna be comparing this movie to Bridesmaids, just like Bridesmaids was compared to The Hangover. Yes, to some extent this was Bridesmaids with cocaine. But while the films both center around a group of bridesmaids before a wedding, the feel of the two are polar opposites. Bridesmaids was ultimately about friendship, and was very strongly character driven. They just happened to be very funny ladies. Bachelorette was trying to be a raunchy comedy, closer to The Hangover, but with even more shock value. Somewhere along the line, they upped the raunchy too much and forgot the comedy.
It was just a lot of “”look at me, I’m so wasted””, nothing particularly clever. And some of the characters, especially Kirsten Dunst’s Regan, were just completely unlikeable. I blame the writing more than the acting. Dunst fully commited, and we did see more comedy from her than we usually do. But its really difficult to like the bossy bitch bridesmaid. I was really excited to see Lizzy Caplan and Isla Fisher. Caplan brought along more of that sarcasm that we saw from her in Mean Girls, but she didn’t have as much to work with here. Fisher was cute and perky, but was the shallowest of them all. I’d missed most of Rebel Wilson’s scenes, and in her later ones I was too focused on her spotty American accent. Shame really, because that girl has such potential.
The boys weren’t that much better. I was happy to see Adam Scott, but he also didn’t have much going for his character. I did enjoy seeing James Marsden as a d-bag guy instead of the usual screwed over nice guy that he was typecast as for a while, but I couldnt help hating his character.
It’s possible that coming into the move late killed the momentum, but really I think this could have been done much better. So much wasted potential in this cast.
Bachelorette – \m/ \m/