Taglines: A Comedy about good friends making bad choices.
Four high school friends, the B-Faces, are going to reunite when one of them, Becky, is about to get married to her sweetheart Dale. For this reason, Regan, Gena and Katie plan to throw a proper bachelorette party for the first in the gang who gets married, and in other words, they are determined to party hard and have a blast, just like prom night, only for grown-ups.
The day before the wedding finally arrives, and everything is in order after six months of careful planning by Regan, the organising mastermind, and the bridesmaids are excited and ready to set New York on fire for the next twelve hours. However, disaster strikes when the girls accidentally ruin Becky’s wedding dress triggering a desperate attempt to make things right again, while the clock is ticking for the big day. As the B-Faces roam the streets of NY in need of an epically brilliant plan, without knowing it, they are very likely to find their true self.
Bachelorette is a 2012 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Leslye Headland, adapted from her play of the same name. It stars Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan and Isla Fisher as three troubled women who reunite for the wedding of a friend (played by Rebel Wilson) who was ridiculed in high school. The play which the film is based upon was originally written as one of Headland’s cycle of “Seven Deadly Sins” plays.
Film Review for Bachelorette
“I’ll get the Cobb salad with no chicken, no bacon, no cheese, no avocado,” declares Regan (Kirsten Dunst), a snippy, overgrown alpha girl ordering lunch in a New York restaurant. Her plus-size companion, Becky, chimes in: “I’ll get the burger and fries with her cheese, her bacon. Don’t bring the dessert menu. I already know I want the cheesecake.” The two friends have a history of bulimia going back to high school.
The convivial mood suddenly shatters when Becky (Rebel Wilson) announces that she is about to marry her wealthy, handsome boyfriend, Dale (Hayes MacArthur), and flashes an engagement ring. Regan, stricken with horror and envy, forces a sick, twisted smile. It was her intention to be the first in their high school clique to marry.
And so begins the barrage of viciously funny satire in “Bachelorette.” This film version of Leslye Headland’s successful Off Broadway play — part of a projected cycle covering the Seven Deadly Sins, it dealt with gluttony — “Bachelorette” comes at you with the crackling intensity of machine-gun fire. Maybe the safest way to watch it is by peeking out from a behind a sandbag.
Drugs, booze and sex lead the list of things voraciously and carelessly consumed by Regan and her two best high school friends and bridesmaids-to-be, Katie (Isla Fisher) and Gena (Lizzy Caplan). Becky, the fourth member of their clique from the class of ’99, could have been included only to provide someone to mock.
Even now, this unholy triumvirate of bitter, jaded friends refers to Becky behind her back by her nasty high school nickname, Pigface. And when a male stripper disguised as a policeman arrives at her bachelorette party and uses the term as instructed, the party fizzles.
The acidic humor in this version of “Bachelorette” is much darker and more truthful than that of its most obvious forerunner, “Bridesmaids.” These foul-mouthed, hard-partying women are closer to American relatives of Edina and Patsy, the intrepidly trendy, perpetually stoned adventurers of “Absolutely Fabulous.” They could also be the spoiled great-grandchildren of Clare Boothe Luce’s “Women.” “Bachelorette” is more tartly written, better acted and less forgiving than male-centric equivalents like the “Hangover” movies.
Its comic apex is a monologue about the finer points of giving oral sex delivered by Gena to a stranger sitting next to her on the plane from Los Angeles to New York. Ms. Caplan’s portrayal of this smart, self-loathing woman who conceals her vulnerability under a toxic, too hip veneer of sarcasm evokes the combative attitude of Janeane Garofalo, minus the political edge.
Hours before the nuptials, the three women’s bad karma catches up with them when Becky’s wedding gown is dragged out of a closet and accidentally torn while Regan and Katie cram themselves into it for a Facebook photo. By the end of the movie, the garment has endured more wear and tear than most dresses in a year. Most of the remaining story is a frantic wild goose chase — with detours — to repair and clean the gown, which has been stained by a cocaine-induced nosebleed.
The movie’s race around Manhattan is a good excuse to give “Bachelorette” some air, along with a screwball energy lacking in the play, which was set entirely in one room. When not looking for a dry cleaner or a seamstress, Regan and her pals crash Dale’s bachelor party and follow him and his groomsmen to a strip club, all the time guzzling and snorting their brains out.
Regan hooks up with her cold, handsome male equivalent, Trevor (James Marsden), in the club bathroom while yapping on a cellphone. Katie passes out while being pursued by Joe (Kyle Bornheimer), a slavishly adoring high school classmate whom she doesn’t remember until he reminds her that he sold her pot. This very pretty airhead is always at her wits’ end.
“I don’t know what to do with someone I really like except sleep with them or get really drunk,” she frets. Gena’s old boyfriend Clyde (Adam Scott) shows up as a member of the groom’s party, and as these exes warily revisit their troubled history, the movie reveals signs that it has a heart. At the core of the film is Regan’s arrogant Little Miss Fixit, who in a confessional moment peevishly complains: “I did everything right. I went to college. I exercise. I eat like a normal person. I’ve got a boyfriend in med school, and nothing is happening to me.”
Like the other bachelorettes — and like so many overprivileged malcontents nowadays — she is looking in the wrong place for salvation: outside rather than within. To revise William Blake’s famous quotation: The road to excess leads not to the palace of wisdom but to the basement of discontent.
Bachelorette (2012)
Directed by: Leslye Headland
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, Lizzy Caplan, James Marsden, Kyle Bornheimer, Rebel Wilson, Adam Scott, Anna Rose Hopkins, Sue Jean Kim, Kyle Bornheimer, Hayes MacArthur, Ella Rae Peck
Screenplay by: Leslye Headland
Production Design by: Richard Hoover
Cinematography by: Doug Emmett
Film Editing by: Jeffrey Wolf
Costume Design by: Anna Bingemann
Set Decoration by: Mary Prlain
Art Direction by: Casey Smith
Music by: Andrew Feltenstein, John Nau
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, pervasive language, and drug use.
Distributed by: The Weinstein Company
Release Date: September 7, 2012
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