Bachelorette ☆☆½

Hollywoodland, in all their wisdom, have got a system whereby they release a film before it is even out in theatres to iTunes (US only) for a limited period. So that is how I managed to watch Bachelorette about three weeks before its release thanks to a friend who is both American and has a US iTunes account.

Bachelorette is set the night before the wedding of Becky, the 'larger' member of the B-Faces from High School which consisted of three others who are to be her bridesmaids: Kirsten Dunst's waspish Regan; Lizzy Caplan's confused Jenna; and Isla Fisher's sweet but dumb Katie.

These three supposed best friends of the bride are determined to have some fun, even though the bride has said that a quiet night is what is needed because of her relations coming from out of town. Jenna and Katie instead snort the coke that Jenna has smuggled with her on the plane (in a talcum powder bottle - heads up airport security checks from now on won't let you have liquid or talc) and proceed to ruin the speeches at the rehearsal dinner by 'outing' Becky's high school bulimia and being so wasted that all they do is say they have lost their phone.

Later at the champagne party (which was arranged instead of a full on bachelorette) a stripper that Katie knows turns up to make the party a bit more lively. However the stripper calls Becky pig-face (as she was called in High School by everyone, even her bridesmaids) which, understandably, makes the bride question the motives behind hiring the stripper.

So everyone is kicked out, and Regan, Jenna and Katie are left snorting coke and drinking heavily. This results in a torn wedding stress, a mad race across New York to get it fixed, reunited lovers, startling revelations about previous trauma, vomit, overdoses, sex in bathrooms, strippers, more drugs, and finally a wedding.

To me, this film is a poor relation to Bridesmaids. In reality I think if it had come out maybe next year it would have stood a better chance at not being compared because they are actually very different stories. Where Bridesmaids was a clever and empowering film about a woman struggling with the changing life of her best friend, Bachelorette is a tale of three women trying to accept that the least pretty and fat one of the group has her life together and is getting married first.

Something that really bothers me about the film is that it never quite works out what type of film it is trying to be. Unlike Bridesmaids (and I promise, its the final comparison), it does not settle on a single genre - almost like it is trying so hard NOT to be a romantic comedy that the humour gets beyond tasteless (in my own opinion) and fails to keep you engaged with any one character. This I think is due to the helm being taken by first time director Leslye Headland, who also wrote the script. Normally such a combination means the direction is tighter and the story lines less likely to run away or be unresolved, not so much here.

There are moments which are undeniably very funny and I did laugh out loud a few times, however there were more times when I was cringing beyond my normal threshold (I cannot deal with humour like The Office because I spend the majority of the time feeling embarrassed) or trying to work out what was going to happen next and where the story was actually going.

The acting - you know I can't really fault it, the characters being depicted were sometimes awful, sometimes sweet, but the actors didn't exactly fail the writing or direction. I love Lizzy Caplan and had such high hopes that the relationship that was being conjured between herself and Adam Scott would be similar to the one they had in Party Down but it veered between being too shocking to being too cheesy (for my taste). But that is not the fault of the actors it is the script and the direction they were given.

Kirsten Dunst is a brilliant wasp I have to say, I found her reactions to what was going on around her mostly believable, and its quite fun to see her being such a bitch. James Marsden is the male version of Dunst in this film and I just found it uncomfortable - the short relationship that crops up could have been so much better had the language been less forced and their characters just an iota more likeable. Instead I was fairly bored that they ended up together in certain scenes and could have done without that, instead I wanted more time given to the Scott/Caplan relationship so that didn't seem quite so rushed.

Isla Fisher (aka Mrs Baron-Cohen) does ditzy and doped up really well, but again unfortunately her character becomes more like a caricature, getting so wasted that she needs looking after before the party has even begun. There are also dark undertones to her state of mind which are never fully explored but are really quite disturbing, as are revealed in her time with Joe, the guy from school who used to sell her pot but has been in love with her from afar since he was a teenager.

What the film appeared to be going for was brutal realism mixed with comedy - and that just doesn't sit well together. The almost blasé attitude toward drug taking was itself fairly offensive, but then perhaps that is just my British sensibilities not recognising the ease of drug taking in cities like New York. I was also disturbed at how little the friends actually supported the bride to be, and yes I understood the reasoning being that there was jealousy that the fat girl got the happy ending first but really - the lack of respect from the beginning just made me question how and why a friendship would last so long.

I did enjoy parts of the film, and like I said the awful characterisation was not the fault of the actors but the writer/director. I just wish it had chosen a genre and stuck to it - if you want to be dark go pitch black, comedy can take it, just watch Death at a Funeral (the original British one) for proof. Equally if you want romance to get mixed in there somewhere then BE a romantic comedy - you can do drugs and still be sweet and funny, if you get the balance right.

Alas, Bachelorette fails to decide what it is, and to me that really isn't good enough when you have such a wealth of comedic and dramatic talent at your fingertips.