Marriage; On the Rocks

Movies: Smashed

There be spoilers in this review!

Smashed is a film about a married couple, Kate and Charlie, who are codependent alcoholics. And when I say "alcoholics", I don't mean that they share a bottle of wine over dinner a few times a week. These people drink and drink and drink. They have a serious problem. Kate, especially, has problems. The film opens with her getting up in the morning after another night of hard drinking. She has wet the bed (again), and she and her hubby act like it's no big thang. She drinks a beer in the shower as she gets ready to go to her job teaching first graders. She ends up throwing up in front of them. And that's not even remotely the most humiliating thing that happens to Kate as a consequence of her drinking.

After a bender that involves urinating in public and drunk bicycling, Kate realizes things need to change. A coworker who is a recovering addict himself offers to take her to an AA meeting, and within one meeting, Kate finds a sponsor. But as she begins to sober up, her relationship with Charlie unravels as the two realize they don't have much in common besides getting wasted.


In my opinion, Smashed was just an ok film. Mary Elizabeth Winstead's performance as Kate was the best thing about it. This is a very unglamorous role. Kate wears no makeup and hideous "mom who gave up" type outfits. I admired the choice of the filmmakers to make Kate the opposite of a sex object. She's naturally pretty, but they don't gussy her up in tight clothes and high heels. The focus of the film is 100% on her struggles with alcohol and relationships; her looks are beside the point.

The rest of the cast is...ok. Aaron Paul, so fierce and edgy in Breaking Bad, is well-cast as the laid back, arrested development hubby who loves partying with his wife more than he actually loves his wife. Nick Offerman of Parks and Rec plays Kate's supportive, but creepy coworker, who gets the best/worst line in the movie. Octavia Spencer is Jenny, Kate's AA sponsor, in an uncomfortably "mammy"-like role: a recovering addict African-American woman who provides tough love and lots of food to those around her.

I really can't speak for alcoholics or addicts, but Smashed didn't seem very realistic to me. Kate has a *serious* drinking problem and is probably physiologically addicted to alcohol. Yet, after one AA meeting, she quits drinking cold turkey for months. Of course, she falls off the wagon near the end of the film after a serious setback in her life. But after an emotionally gripping scene where she comes home drunk and then rages at Charlie, telling him she can't be sober AND be with him, --BAM--the movie flashes forward and Kate is sober one year. Whaaaa?!

Smashed had an intriguing premise: what happens to a marriage when one person makes radical changes in their life? What if those changes are for the better, but the other partner isn't ready to deal with them? However, in practice Smashed didn't really seem to work. The movie had a lot of unrealistic extremes that didn't match up: for example, Kate' extreme alcoholism and her extremely easy time getting sober. I mean, I guess I can't judge because I don't know much about alcoholism and AA, but I had to give this movie the serious side-eye many times.

3 out of 5 stars

The Joy of Disabled Sex

Movies: The Sessions

"I asked Cheryl whether she thought I deserved to be loved sexually. She said she was sure of it. I nearly cried. She didn’t hate me. She didn’t consider me repulsive."
--Mark O'Brien, from "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate" 

I've always been fascinated with sexuality. Not always in a prurient way, although, yes, sometimes in a prurient way (Mom, if you're reading this...sorry!). But fascinated by sex in an academic way, and also in a socio-cultural way. What are the implications of sex in our society? In other societies? In history?

Something I often think about in regards to sexuality is that despite being one of the most powerful and transformative experiences in human life, sex is so often used as a weapon to shame or hurt. Physically, rape and abuse are disturbingly prevalent, especially among vulnerable populations. But sexual shame and humiliation are just as prevalent and perhaps even more insidious. Religious communities police sex to varying degrees, using shame and threats of hell to control what they see as sexuality that goes "against God". Secular culture is filled with messages that tell people they are too fat, too ugly, too slutty, too virginal for sex. Or, conversely, that they are not enough: not enough of a man, not enough of a woman.

I'm not a clergyperson. And I'm not a psychologist. And I don't have an advanced degree in sociology or gender studies (yet...). But I can tell you something that I know is true, and I think you know is true as well: the people and forces in society who say that you don't deserve physical affection and that you are in some way "not good enough" for sex are wrong. You are good enough. The religious communities that tell you your sexuality and sexual expression are sinful? They are the sinners. Is it a worse sin to have sex outside of marriage, or to be gay, than to systematically remove someone else's bodily agency through constant shame, physical punishment, and threats of God's wrath?

Mark O'Brien, a poet who contracted polio at age 6 and spent most of his life immobile in an iron lung, knew something about shame and sexuality. He was raised by a Catholic family that never spoke of sex. Despite Mark's severe disability, he graduated from college and became an accomplished poet and writer. But by age 38 he had no sexual experience beyond kissing. He could achieve orgasm, but it was often out of his control and usually while he was being washed by his attendants, adding an extra helping of humiliation.

In his wonderful essay, "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate", Mark explains that it wasn't just his disability that kept him from having a sex life; in fact, he had interviewed a series of disabled people with active sex lives for an article, so he knew that it was certainly possible. The biggest obstacles for Mark were his repressive upbringing and his own self-loathing about his disabled body.

But Mark O'Brien was a brave and pretty independent dude, and so at age 38 he decided it was time to lose his virginity. With the blessing of a very cool priest, Mark hired a sex surrogate to teach him how to have sex and how to accept his own sexuality.

The Sessions, a frank and sincere film, chronicles Mark O'Brien's experience with sex surrogate Cheryl. The mind-blowingly amazing and versatile actor John Hawkes (from Winter's Bone and Martha Marcy May Marlene) plays O'Brien--a man who used words and a sense of humor as both an entrance into and a defense mechanism against a world that had trouble adjusting to his body and disabilities. Helen Hunt plays Cheryl, a warm woman who is able to see that Mark's fear of sex stems not from his disability, but from the anger, shame, and self-loathing that he has had to fight against his whole life. Cheryl doesn't just teach Mark to control his body in order to have "fully penetrative intercourse", but also to forgive himself for contracting polio as a child.

The Sessions itself is a pretty decent film--the acting, as mentioned above, is excellent all around. It's lightly humorous and talks about sex in a very frank way without being vulgar or even showing anything too explicit. The film itself is unoffensive, positive, and, honestly, not that challenging. What is challenging are the ideas that propel the film: that disabled people have just as much of a right to sexual expression as able-bodied people. That being a man means more than have a strong body or the ability to be virile in bed. That God Him/Her/Itself rejoices in physical love and affection. These ideas surround and influence the movie. But to get the full experience of what Mark O'Brien was thinking and going through, you should really read the article. It's not long, but it gives insight into how even just a few hours spent with a therapist whose job it was to help him explore sex truly changed Mark's life and perception of his own body and sexuality for the better.

We live in a weird world. The constant thrum of not good enough not sexy enough not thin enough not rich enough surrounds us. We get messages from our families, our churches, our communities, and our peers on what acceptable sexuality looks like. We feel like we need to ask permission to be ourselves: is this ok? am I normal? will you love me? will you accept me? Our politicians use our bodily autonomy as wedge issues to ensure votes. And some of us, like Mark O'Brien, have the added burden of an unprivileged body. A disabled body, a fat body, an "ugly" body. 

What is so easy to forget as we negotiate and navigate this world where it feels like so much is at stake, is that it's up to us. Perhaps God gave you your body, but in giving He also gave you the right, the access, the choice. It's your body. It's your sexuality. Don't use it to hurt others or yourself. Don't waste it on shame and fear. Use it for love.

4 out of 5 stars

Mark O'Brien and a friend.

Bite Me

Movies: Breaking Dawn, pt. 2

"It's over. Now let's never speak of it again."
-My friend, upon leaving a screening of Breaking Dawn, pt. 2


Well, you can breathe a sigh of relief. The Twilight Saga films are officially over and done with (for now...until Stephenie Meyer decides to continue the series). I stuck with the Twilight movies to the bitter, sparkly end, and I can't say I'll miss the series. However, the final part of the series, Breaking Dawn, pt. 2, had a surprising amount of...bite to it. Ho-ho!

For one thing, now that Kristen Stewart's character, Bella, is a vampire, she is finally granted a personality. No longer the shrinking violet with a masochistic streak, Bella is kinda cool as a vamp. She's sexy, she's hungry, she's strong. She also has a quirky little special power--she's a "shield". She can protect others by projecting her shield onto them (visually, it kind of looks like when movie characters have flashbacks and the screen gets all wavy and blurry). So, finally, Bella isn't so damn weak. And it's a good thing, since she's made an enemy of the Volturi.


Let me remind you who the Volturi are again. Basically, they are the high church of vampires. They reside in Italy and make sure that all other vampires in the world are following the rules. When the Volturi get word that Bella and Edward Cullen have created an "immortal child" (a vampire child), which is a huge sin in the vampire world because such children cannot be controlled, they amass an army to confront and punish the Cullen clan.

What they don't know is that the "immortal child" is actually mortal. She's the half-human, half-vampire spawn of Bella and Edward, conceived and born while Bella was still human. She also has a terrible name, Renesmee, and a grown man (Jacob) is in love with her. But, you know, let's roll with it.

So the Cullens begin amassing an army of their own--not to fight, but to serve as witnesses to the fact that Renesmee poses no threat to the vampire world. This is an excuse to meet cool vampires from all over the world, include a couple of black vampires from the jungle who are dressed like exotic natives and it's all racist and shit!

Once the final showdown begins, with the Volturi showing up to confront the Cullens and all their cool vampire friends, it gets veeerrry interesting.

Stop reading now if you don't want to get spoiled!

In the trailers for BD2, you may have noticed that there is an intense fight sequence between the Volturi and the Cullens. Indeed, there is an epic battle scene in the film that begins with Aro (Michael Sheen, camping it up wonderfully), the head of the Volturi, ripping Carlisle Cullen's head from his motha-fuckin' body!!! During this battle we see many beloved characters kick the bucket before Bella and Edward finally take out Aro himself.

Here's the thing. I've read Breaking Dawn and no one, except one minor villainous character, dies at the end. The ending of Breaking Dawn is one of the dumbest, most anti-climatic endings ever. Basically, the Volturi come, they try to pull some vampire tricks on the Cullens, but Bella protects everyone with her womanly childbearing hips "shield", and then after the Cullens explain that Renesmee is actually not 100% a vampire and will grow up, the Volturi leave. The end. Seriously, it's THE WORST. Even J.K. Rowling had the balls to kill off Hedwig and one of the Weasley brothers at the end of Harry Potter.

Ok, so the movie seeeeems to take the source material in a radically different direction by actually having a battle sequence where characters actually die. And man, the crowd was going wild in the theatre where I saw the movie. But at the last minute, they pull the biggest cliche in the book: it was all a dream! Sort of. It turns out that the fight sequence was a vision. Alice Cullen, who can see into the future, takes hold of Aro's arm to show him how a battle could turn out (with Aro, and many other Volturi, dying the true death by getting their heads ripped off) if the Volturi insist on fighting. Well, needless to say, Aro doesn't much like that, and the Volturi turn tail and head back to Italy. And no one dies! Yay!

Ultimately, BD2 wanted to have its cake and eat it too--to have an awesome battle scene, complete with shocking and violent ends to beloved (and not so beloved) characters--but to also please the fans by staying true to the (awful, bad, poorly written and plotted) source material. And you know, it kinda works. I would have loved it if the battle scene had been real--what a shock to the throngs of tween girl fans!--but even though they pulled the whole "It was only a dream" switcheroo, I'm glad they got even a little subversion in there. It was better than nothing.

End spoilers!

I could mock the Twilight movies further, but they are such easy targets that it's not very fun. The books are poorly written and the final book is absurdly anti-climatic and reads like bad fan-fiction. The movies are not great, and Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are underwhelming. The whole Twiverse is sexist, heteronormative, shallow, and simplistic.

But are they the worst books and movies ever? The most sexist books and movies ever? No. Not even close. It's kind of sad, actually. The series is so mediocre, it doesn't live up to the haters' expectations of it.

In conclusion, the only thing to really say about Breaking Dawn, pt. 2 is: it's not as bad as the other Twilight movies.

3 stars out of 5

Argo See These Movies

Movies: Argo, Looper

I feel guilty for not getting around to reviewing Argo and Looper sooner, since it's been a few weeks since I've seen them and the details are fading in my memory, but hey...other stuff like hurricanes and work get in the way.

Argo



Ben Affleck's latest directing/acting effort since The Town is a real nail biter. Based on the true story of six American embassy personnel who managed to escape from Iran during the tumultuous 1979 revolution, Argo is one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" movies. Affleck plays Tony Mendez, a CIA exfiltration expert who, after watching Planet of the Apes with his son, devises the hare-brained scheme to smuggle the embassy employees out of Iran under the guise that they're a production crew of a science-fiction film being shot in the area. The plan needs to be elaborately detailed and fool-proof, so Mendez gets the help of somewhat sleazy Hollywood producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) to guarantee that all of Hollywood is fooled into thinking this movie ("Argo", picked out of a pile of random scripts) is actually happening. Then Mendez travels to Iran and has the unenviable job of convincing the six stowaways at the Canadian prime minister's house to trust him with their lives and run with this plan.

Perfectly cast with many familiar faces who disappear into their roles (Clea Duvall as one of the six embassy employees hiding out, and Victor Garber as the Canadian prime minister among them), Argo is really entertaining. Affleck sustains a palpable tension for most of the movie, particularly in the last third when the escape plan is put into action. Argo isn't my personal favorite of the year, but it's objectively a great movie and is definitely going to be up for some awards during Oscar season.

4 out of 5 stars

***


Looper

One must go into Looper prepared to suspend one's disbelief. As with any movie about time travel, the film is rife with plot holes. But if you're able to get past that, and not ask too many questions, Looper is a hell of a good time.

I was genuinely surprised by the direction Looper took. I won't give too much away,  but I'll say that Emily Blunt's character, the homesteading mom Sara, who was barely featured in the previews, takes on a pivotal role in the movie. In fact, Looper is less about the mechanics of time travel and more of a philosophical exercise in how our current choices and actions affect those around us and our future selves.

The year is 2044. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, a "looper" whose job is to arrive at an appointed spot at an appointed time and kill people that criminals in the future (around 2074, when time travel is invented and immediately outlawed) send back in time. It's a glamorous--if unethical--job that pays well (in silver bars!) and lets Joe and his fellow loopers party their asses off in a society where the gap between the rich and poor is outrageously large. [On that note: vote Obama on Tuesday!]

The only thing that sucks about being a looper is that at some point you will be required to "close your loop". Basically, the baddies in the future will send the future you back in time. You are expected to kill your future self with your giant blunderbuss, take a final golden pay check, and kick back and relax until 30 years from now...when you're on the other end of that blunderbuss.

Those loopers who "let their loop run" by failing to kill their future selves are in for a world of hurt, as Seth (Paul Dano in a small but memorable role) finds out. The loopers' bosses can't allow this to happen, so if your loop runs, you better find him and kill him or risk being killed yourself.

And guess who accidentally ends up letting his loop run and must spend the rest of the movie hunting his future self down?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt once again shows his acting chops as Joe, a looper with a little more foresight and motivation than the others. JGL wears prosthetics in order to look more like Bruce Willis (playing Joe's future self). I gotta say, he looked both creepy in an uncanny valley way, and really hot in a "butch Joseph Gordon-Levitt" way.

Another great actor in Looper is Jeff Daniels, playing the loopers' big boss, Abe. Daniel's plays Abe as basically an evil version of the Dude in The Big Lebowski--a man just as likely to offer you a drink as his is to smash your fingers with a hammer.

And I mentioned Emily Blunt earlier, but the real standout is Pierce Gagnon, who plays her son, Cid. This kid is un-frickin'-believable. Not *quite* as good of a performance as Quvenzhane Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild, but pretty damn amazing. And creepy. Although most child actors are creepy. It's that uncanny valley thing again: they're talking like grown-ups, but they're obviously tiny children. Eeek!

I won't say anything about what happens in Looper because it's too complicated and spoiler-y, but I will say that it is totally worth checking out. It's slick and dark and brain-twisty. Kind of like Inception, but a little more rough around the edges. Like Joseph Gordon-Levitt's prosthetically-enhanced face.

4.5 out of 5 stars

JGL with his normal face.
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JGL with his butch Bruce face.
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I'll Have a Baby; Hold the Marriage

Movies: Friends with Kids

Friends with Kids came out earlier this year and was touted as a Bridesmaids cast reunion. Indeed, the film stars Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph, and Chris O'Dowd (along with Jennifer Westfeldt and Adam Scott as the leads). Unfortunately, Friends with Kids does not have the humor or optimism of Bridesmaids. It's a pretty bland romantic comedy and even a bit of a downer.

Scott and Westfeldt play Jason and Julie: platonic pals since college. The two remain single and childless while their friends pair off and, eventually, have kids. Julie and Jason observe their friends (Wiig and Hamm play one couple and Rudolph and O'Dowd play another) transform from fun-loving, lusty young adults into angry, tired, humorless parents. And they decide that although they want little brats of their own, they don't want to sacrifice the romance and lust for life like their friends did.

So they do the logical thing and decide to have a kid together. They figure that as good buddies, they'll be able to share the duties of child-rearing while still being open to sex and romance with other partners. It's ingenious! Except that, of course, this is a romantic comedy so you know they'll get together in the end.


Friends with Kids had a few nuggets of insight thrown in to an overly-simplistic narrative. At one point, high strung Leslie (Rudolph) discusses Julie and Jason's unusual arrangement with her laid-back hubby, Alex (O'Dowd). Leslie says, "They're doing this to undermine us" and Alex scoffs at the idea that Julie and Jason's life choices have anything to do with Leslie and Alex's marriage. This was a throwaway scene, but I really wish that Westfeldt (who wrote and directed the film) had spent more time exploring it. We're always hearing about the so-called "Mommy Wars"--staying at home vs. working; daycare vs. a nanny; breast vs. bottle. People get so caught up in how others raise their kids (or if others choose to reproduce at all, when, and how often) and probably not because they actually care about the kids' well-being, but because they think other peoples' choices undermine their own. I think women get the brunt of this pressure because, hey, we're the ones with wombs. And we're supposed to all be excellent, perfect mothers. It's enough to make a gal give herself an at-home tubal ligation!

Sadly, the film does not explore parenting pressure at any length or depth. Instead, we get to see Julie and Jason's slow journey toward realizing that each other is "the One" as they raise their child and their terrible, judgy friends fight and make each other miserable.

A couple things that rang false to me: first, the reason that Julie and Jason never got together in the first place is because they weren't attracted to each other. Jason makes it very clear that he is not sexually interested in Julie, which is hurtful to her. But then--BAM--at the very end, Jason decides that, wait a second, he's actually totally hot for Julie! The two can have a romantic relationship now! Yay! Except that in real life if you knew someone for two decades and never had the desire to hook up with them, why would you now? That's not realistic to me. And I guess you could argue that Jason realizes that he loves Julie on a level deeper than surface attraction, but for a movie that is so intently invested in sex and sexual attraction as a core component of a lasting romantic relationship, it seems disingenuous for the movie to throw all that out the window at the end.

Secondly, Julie and Jason seem to base their ideas about marriage and kids on two sets of couples they know: Alex and Leslie, and Ben (Hamm) and Missy (Wiig). That's kind of narrow-minded because, for one thing, Ben and Missy have an obviously terrible (and, it's hinted at, abusive) relationship--kids or no kids. Ben is a complete bully (for what it's worth, Hamm is great at playing handsome bullies) who even makes a "joke" about how he had to rape his wife to get her pregnant. Ha! Ha! ...ha? So the whole having kids thing is irrelevant--these two were clearly headed for divorce court anyway. And then Alex and Leslie's relationship really isn't that dysfunctional. Leslie is just a control freak whose tendencies escalate after she has kids. Alex is laid-back to the point of being passive and just accepts that he gets to have sex like, once a month from now on (this fact horrifies Jason, who apparently didn't know that many couples' sex lives drop off after they have kids). Alex and Leslie actually work together--a little couples therapy and a babysitter once in a while would do them a world of good.

So, my point in breaking all this down is that Julie and Jason make this important life decision based on a rather small sample. They look at their friends and think "kids have ruined their marriages", when actually Ben and Missy's marriage was over before it started, and Alex and Leslie have a pretty normal, if stressed marriage. Kids have little, if nothing, to do with it. So the whole premise of the movie is flawed.

I was disappointed by Friends with Kids because it had the potential to be an interesting exploration of alternative parenting choices, and the pressure society and our friends and loved ones put on us to not only to get married and have kids, but to do it in exactly the "right" way and have a smile on your face while you're doing it. Instead, the movie was tired and cliched. It wasn't horrible. It just didn't live up to its potential.

3 out of 5 stars

When the Bud Becomes too Painful Not to Blossom

Movies: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I love a good coming of age story. The journey into adulthood/loss of "innocence" is one of those most compelling aspects of human life, and it's something we all go through in one way or another.

That said, a lot of high school movies suck. Possibly because they're often made by greedy, cynical adults who "just don't understand". High school movies tend to cast beautiful, tall, perfect actors in their late twenties as 17 year old kids. These films fall into two camps: movies where teens get wasted and have bizarrely tidy/softly lit sex; or movies where teens' lives are ruined by pregnancy/abortion/drugs/bullying/[insert cliche here] and that misery is played out in a dark avalanche of schadenfreude for the audience's entertainment and self-righteousness.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, directed and written by Stephen Chbosky (who also wrote the book, which I confess I've never read), is a rare teen movie that transcends its genre. There is still a whiff of "after school special" hovering around it, since the teens in this movie each have a laundry list of pretty awful problems to deal with. But even at its darkest, Wallflower never wallows into preachiness or melodrama. The film remains buoyant, genuine, and--most importantly--humane.  A high school movie where the characters treat each other with kindness and care--but not in a totally phony way? That's a big deal.

In Wallflower, Logan Lerman plays Charlie, a gentle and shy high school freshman. He hopes to make some friends, or at least be allowed to eat lunch with his big sister and her friends, on the first day of school. Alas, the only friend Charlie makes is his English teacher (Paul Rudd), and he eats alone in the cafeteria. But Charlie isn't the terrified, wilting wallflower he initially seems. He gets up the courage to sit with the openly gay class clown--Patrick, played by Ezra Miller, who is pretty freaking awesome--during a football game. Patrick introduces Charlie to his stepsister, Sam (Emma Watson, in a wonderful post-Harry Potter performance). Sam and Patrick decide to take Charlie under their wing, like teen guardian angels. They take Charlie to parties where he experiments with mind-altering substances. They get him into The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which was also a rite of passage for me--albeit in freshman year of college). And Sam gives Charlie his first kiss as if it were a gift. "I want to make sure that the first person who kisses you loves you." she says.

The thing I liked about Wallflower is that it never seems fake or forced. One of the core messages of the movie and book--"We accept the love we think we deserve"--is passed from Charlie's English teacher to Charlie to Sam. And it's the kind of message that could easily be expressed in a sappy, shallow manner. But Chbosky handles this idea--that learning how to love yourself is imperative so you don't let others treat you like crap--sensitively and earnestly. And it's surprisingly deep. Because it's so true; and it's something many adults--let alone kids--struggle with.

I won't go too much into the drama in Wallflower. Much of it is typical teen drama (dating, mating, and relating). But there are some surprisingly dark issues explored. Patrick, Sam, and Charlie struggle with things that have been done to them or ways other people have treated them. All three characters were treated poorly by someone who proclaimed to love them. And they learn over the course of the movie that when someone who says they love you hands you shit on a silver platter, you have the agency to reject that shit. Which, of course, goes back to the theme: "we accept the love we think we deserve." They learn not to accept what other people hand them, while calling it love. Instead, they seek love among each other and in themselves.

My generation traffics in irony. Our motto is "If you can't say something sarcastic, say nothing at all. Especially on Facebook." And when you're surrounded by endless snark and cynicism, you forget how nice earnestness feels once in a while. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an earnest movie that catches you off guard with it's humanistic approach to high school, and life in general.

4 out of 5 stars

My Fat Friend's Wedding

Movies: Bachelorette

Bachelorette is an enjoyable, if a bit "on the nose", bad-girl movie. The lovechild of Heathers and Bridesmaids, Bachelorette is neither as evil as the former nor as kind as the latter. It's a bitchy movie, but not a nihilistic one.

When I say "on the nose" above, what I mean is that the characters in Bachelorette are broadly drawn stereotypes. There are two significantly overweight characters in the film: Bride-to-be Becky (played by the awesome Rebel Wilson, who played Kristen Wiig's creepy roommate in Bridesmaids), and groomsman Joe. Both of these characters are nice, funny, and caring towards their fellow human beings. The rest of the characters are conventionally good-looking and slim, and with the exception of Becky's nice-guy fiance, Dale, the skinny characters are selfish, immature, stupid, slutty, drug-addicted, and just plain mean.

While it's nice to see an inversion of the "fat guy gets skinny chick" stereotype, with plus-size (but otherwise conventionally good-looking) Becky getting fit, attractive Dale, it's also just plain dumb the way these characters line up perfectly as heroes and villains. Becky is the first of a group of high school friends, the "B-faces", to get engaged. Her fellow B-faces (why do high school girl groups always have names? I'm pretty sure there were no "Plastics" or "Heathers" at my high school) include slutty coke-fiend Jenna (Lizzy Kaplan), unbelievably stupid Katie (Isla Fisher), and Type-A mean girl Regan (Kirsten Dunst, walking the line between loyal friend and complete bitch nicely). Regan is the first to find out about Becky's engagement and calls her friends expressing her confounded feelings that the fat friend, known as "Pig face" in high school, is the first to get married!

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS. FAT GIRLS GET MARRIED!!?? My mind is blown, seriously. Especially since, you know, overweight people make up the majority of Americans and like, 90% of Americans marry at least once in their lifetime. But ok, ok. Let's take this movie at face-value. Becky is the fat, and also awesome friend, and she is achieving a traditional, heterosexual rite of passage before her skinny, terrible friends, which is like TOTALLY CRAY-CRAY AMIRITE?!

Jenna, Katie, and Regan come together as bridesmaids of Becky. Regan is the maid of honor, which is smart on Becky's part because Regan is basically a more glamorous version of Tracy Flick from Election. Regan may be a bitch, but she gets. shit. done. I want a maid of honor like her if I ever get married.

During a drug/alcohol-fueled pre-wedding moment of tomfoolery, these three geniuses manage to tear Becky's plus-size wedding dress. The rest of the movie revolves around them trying desperately, in the middle of the night, to repair and clean the dress. Meanwhile, the gals continually run into the groomsmen, who are out for a night on the town with hapless Dale, the nice guy groom who doesn't want to go to a strip club (awww...but also, yeah right).

I won't go into details about what happens, but I will say that Regan redeems herself by actually being there for Becky minutes before she has to walk down the isle. Becky falters for a moment, whispering, "My mom thinks I'm too fat for [Dale]." Regan, who spent much of the movie mocking Becky's weight, looks Becky in the eye and says "Becky. Fuck everyone."

Fuck everyone. 

Wow. Obviously, you can't use "fuck everyone" as your day-to-day mantra because everyone would say "fuck you too" back and you'd have no friends. But at a moment like this, when it's time to woman-up, put on the big-girl panties, "fuck everyone" is exactly what I would want a friend to say to me. This is why Regan manages at the last minute to transcend the hero/villain dichotomy of Bachelorette. Sure, Regan is terrible in a lot of ways, but she still saves to day--with her sheer iron will and dominance. Some people in the movie refer to her as a psychopath. But I think she's just smart.

Bachelorette is hardly a paradigm-shifting film. The characters can be pretty one-dimensional, particularly Isla Fisher's brain-dead portrayal of Katie (between Ansel in Killer Joe and Freddie in The Master, dumb people are having a moment in film). And it really annoyed me, but also kind of cracked me up how, in the first scene, Regan and Becky are having lunch together and Regan orders a Cobb salad, "hold the chicken, bacon, and avocado" and Becky orders a burger and fries, with cheesecake for desert. I wonder if the director intended for them to order such eye-rollingly obvious "skinny" and "fat" people food. It's actually kind of genius how brazen some of the stereotypes were.

Bachelorette is no Bridesmaids, but it's also smarter and funnier than your average chick flick.

3.75 out of 5 stars