Bride Wars is like a tossed wedding bouquet that never comes down, fluffy enough to float into the ether. The disappointment that would cause is nothing compared to the movie.
Once again we have a comedy revolving around wedding planning, as if we haven't exhausted the jokes. The difference is that two weddings are involved, doubling the number of times the same old gags are told.
Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) are lifelong friends sharing the dream of June weddings at Manhattan's plush Plaza Hotel. That's all they have in common since Liv is a barracuda lawyer with money to burn and Emma is a pushover scraping by on a teacher's salary. They have nondescript boyfriends — a third male must be introduced twice to separate him from the others — who propose on cue.
Liv and Emma meet with Plaza marriage maven Marion St. Claire (Candice Bergen) and choose separate wedding dates so they can be each other's maid of honor. But a mistake leads to them both being wed on June 6 — that's D-Day, just in case you didn't catch the reference.
That leads to a prolonged rivalry of sabotaged spray tans and hair tint, sneaking calories into Liv's diet so she won't fit into her Vera Wang gown and Emma upstaging her friend's bridal shower. Bride Wars plays like a very special episode of a bad sitcom, all spontaneous crises until the group-hug finale.
That's a shame because Hathaway's doelike presence is ripe for some shenanigans like these, and Hudson is better as a conniving foil than as romantic distraction for Matthew McConaughey from himself. They're still appealing performers despite a screenplay that seldom finds humor in anything. Unless you believe beating a rival to the punch with text-messaged "save the date" announcements is funny.
Director Gary Winick pads the movie with peppy musical interludes and sentimental montages resembling Publix commercials.
The fact that Bride Wars is rated PG betrays its tame approach to a premise begging for more bite.
Steve Persall can be reached at persall@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8365. Read his blog, Reeling in the Years, at blogs.tampabay.com/movies.
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