Forgive me my grammar mistakes for I am tired.
As a 20 year-old student with access to my father’s Netflix account, I enjoy scrolling through the recommended movies and tv shows for something new to watch, and often I had scrolled past Bachelorette, knowing someday I would watch it. Well, today was the day, and I thought I’d do something a little different for this blog by reviewing it.
Now I wouldn’t feel the need to review this movie if it had done well with the critics, but it has instead received largely unfavorable reviews from critics as well as Netflix users. Maybe I have no taste in entertainment (I am a bit of an omnivore), but I really don’t agree with those reviews, and here’s why:
Bachelorette is not The Hangover. It has many similar basic elements, sure, in that it takes place in the night before the wedding and focuses on how much the main bridesmaids can royally screw up the approaching big day for the bride. It’s also comedic. That’s about it though. Where The Hangover is over-the-top ridiculous comedy, pulling out all the tricks that Vegas allows and then some, Bachelorette’s comedy is based on very realistic experiences, such as taking too many drugs, trying to get laid at weddings, and how horrible girls can be.
But that’s just it, and that’s what I think a lot of the critics missed about it: this was a film about horrible girls and why they’re horrible. The film opens with three thin, pretty girls (Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, and Lizzy Caplan) talking about how the fourth girl of their group (Rebel Wilson) is now engaged, despite her being fat and nicknamed “pigface” throughout school. Dunst is clearly a workaholic obsessed with being perfect, Fisher a “dumb” party girl who can’t seem to grow up, and Caplan a sarcastic, bitter junkie. What a perfect trio. And really, to me it is. A lot of those characteristics can be said of girls when they get to their mid to late twenties and are struggling with real adulthood.
Each girl may have their own stereotypical way of how they handle adulthood, but they also have their own depressing reason behind it, from Caplan’s revelation that all of this time she’s been at a concert and didn’t even like the music (a “concert” she came to for reasons I don’t want to say, can’t spoil everything!), to Fisher’s quiet but frequent comments about suicide when intoxicated, these are girls that have been broken by high school, by society, by life.
The moment of these which stuck out most to me was with Dunst, the ringleader of the group and maid of honor who manages to pull the everything together except her own life. The theme of bulimia ran throughout, due to Wilson’s size and her supposedly having been bulimic growing up. We find out she actually took the blame when caught with Dunst in the bathroom by the principal. Dunst tries to purge in order to feel in control of the messy situation, and then later, when Fisher has overdosed and is passed out in the bathroom on the morning of the wedding, Dunst pushes her fingers down her throat to make her throw up. The man there asks her why she would ever do that to herself, and she replies simply, “I wanted to be beautiful.”
So if you’re looking for The Hangover with women, I wouldn’t recommend Bachelorette. But if you’re looking for three very honest portrayals of real life struggles caused from insecurities we develop when all of us become more horrible to each other, then this could be the film for you. And to the haters, I hope the cast can maintain the big moral of the story:
dream.think.work. 