Bride Wars (2009) Dir. Gary Winick
This much-maligned film follows two best friends who accidentally book their weddings on the same day.
This film gets a bad rep. I’d like to give it the redemption arc it deserves. Let’s start on a shallow level: sometimes I like to watch films where I like the clothes and the hair. Production design is one of the few things I enjoy about Game of Thrones, it can be enough to keep me watching a film or series that I’ve lost interest in. Sometimes, I just want to look at pretty things. Bride Wars is one of the best repositories of late noughties fashion since Gossip Girl. There are CHUNKY BELTS, there are LONG LINE CARDIGANS, there are more ENORMOUS PURSES than you can shake a stick at. This film came out when I was 16, and I can confirm that none of the fashion of that era suited me at all. Not at all. Longline cardigans made me look chunky, and chunky belts made me look chunkier. I have since learned that my fashion niche is “woman who did the murder in an episode of Endeavour” and lads, I’m sticking with it. However, the fashion of Bride Wars captures all that nostalgic desire, all the ways I wanted to dress and never managed. Kate Hudson’s chunky blonde highlights and heavy fringe probably adorned the cover of my beloved Company Magazine (RIP sweet princess) multiple times during my late teens, and Anne Hathaway was a role model for me from the moment Mia Thermopolis graced my TV screen. This film uniquely captures 2009 and bottles it up like a time capsule, a priceless archive of late noughties consumerism.
On a slightly deeper level though, this film is really fun for a lot of the reasons the original reviewers hated it. Yes - the characters are shallow and fixated on the consumerist side of weddings in a way that is completely unhealthy. Yes - it would be stupid if real women behaved that way. But is that not the point of comedy?
Comedy is saying “wouldn’t it be stupid if...” and then working through the repercussions of that stupid idea. Wouldn’t it be stupid if two stoners could time travel in a phone box? Wouldn’t it be stupid if two cops had to go back to high school? Wouldn’t it be stupid if two men had to pretend to be women in order to get jobs in a band? Bride Wars as a concept is no more or less ridiculous than any of those, it’s simply: Wouldn’t it be stupid if two best friends got so obsessed with their weddings that they sabotaged eachother? I think people don’t like this film because at an even baser level, it’s “Wouldn’t it be stupid if women took weddings as seriously as the world tells them to?” To think that Bride Wars honestly believes that all women feel this strongly about their “big day” or weddings in general, is to misunderstand it. The comedy comes from the fact that Liv and Emma are behaving in a way that is completely unreasonable. Two of the writers of the film were actual women, and unless the third male writer came in and added the entire plot, I feel like their voices come through here.
Maybe people don’t like Bride Wars because it showcases some of the more damaging attitudes that the noughties were foisting on women. That having been fat was tantamount to having been addicted to food, that women are always competing, that weddings are all women care about. These were all attitudes I remember sharing in. But Bride Wars doesn’t demonstrate them without questioning them. The whole narrative of this film demonstrates that if women were to take weddings as seriously as they were told to at that time, they would end up damaging their relationships with their friends, family and partners. Emma and Liv lose sight of what’s important about weddings and there are consequences to that. Bride Wars is, in many ways, about the release that comes from letting go of your childhood beliefs and dreams. The character of Emma even learns to let go of her ideas about who she is, to become a stronger, more assertive version of herself.
Yes, Bride Wars is a screaming pantomime of blue hair and taffeta, but to write it off because of the “femininity” of its subject matter is to miss the point. Bride Wars is critical of the wedding industry, and champions female friendship. Even the small, side-character friends demonstrate the negative attitudes that single women of that era (and it was an era, even if it was a decade ago, just because it’s nearer doesn’t mean it’s not an era) were subjected to. The idea that being a single woman while your friends are getting married is shameful and an indicator that your life is going badly is depicted here - but it’s played as “that’s stupid, isn’t it?” By choosing comedy as the genre to explore this industry, the creative team have the chance to draw our attention to the ideological flaws inherent in it. The comedy is not laughing at silly women, it is laughing at the idea that anybody, male or female, could be driven to such desperate lengths over a wedding.
When I was 17, I had a big argument with my best friend at the time. I can’t remember what it was about, but we went from talking every minute of the day to feeling awkward around each other. Then I went to her house and we watched Bride Wars. I’m not close with that friend anymore, and that’s fine, people move on. At that time, this film repaired a friendship that was really valuable to me because whatever we were arguing about must have been about as stupid as fighting over a wedding venue. Bride Wars deserves a redemption arc, rewatch it and give it a second chance.
