For the past few weekends, I keep seeing the trailer for a new film that both horrifies and repulses me. There are a lot of terrible movies coming out in the next couple of months, February being the movie industry’s port-o-potty, but this particular piece of shit is coming much sooner than that. The opening chords of the music spark recognition and creeping dread and then Candice Bergen’s voice kicks in and I know I am fucked.  It is Bride Wars, releasing in January 9th, and I am getting to a point where I can’t wait for the movie’s release only so I no longer have to endure the trailer’s two minutes and twenty-three seconds of hell.

The movie’s high concept premise is reasonably simple. Two vapid bitches played by Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson are obsessed with their wedding day and have been since they were children. The wedding must be in June and must be at the Plaza to be perfect. When the time comes for their weddings they accidentally schedule them on the same day. Instead of acting like rational, fully functional adults, they decide to go to war with one another in effort to supplant and ruin each other’s weddings. Hilarious. Each time I see this trailer I find it more and more difficult to keep myself from standing up, screaming, and throwing all of my over priced popcorn and soda at the screen. Normally I am not the sort of person to get the urge to have this sort of outburst, but this movie really rubs me the wrong way and there are a couple of reasons for it.

First of all, and this is really more of a general complaint about this type of movie than this particular one, I just flat out hate these high concept comedies that we are saddled with every year. These sorts of movies, which always seem to star either Kate Hudson or Matthew McConaughey, or both if we are all really fucked, are predicated on the most absurd of premises and coincidences and don’t stand up to even the most cursory baseline scrutiny.

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is probably the best example of this sort of movie. In that cinematic gem, Kate Hudson is a magazine writer who longs for more substantial assignments and bets her editor she can make a guy break up with her in just 10 days and Matthew McConaughey is an ad executive who makes a bet that he can make any woman fall in love with him in 10 days and if he does he lands a lucrative diamond account. I just can’t even accept this premise in the first place let alone actually sit through it. That these two particular people would find each other and just happen to be using the other for their respective bets is absolutely preposterous on its face, but then you have to take into account the idea that nobody is going to get into these sorts of bets in the first place. I absolutely refuse to believe that a multi-million dollar diamond advertising account could hang in the balance of some jackass’s ability to make someone fall in love with him or that a magazine editor would dangle a better job over someone’s nose to make her prove that she can lose someone in 10 days. And how fucking hard is it to completely annihilate a relationship in 10 days anyway? You can do that shit in an hour with enough liquor, a video camera, and a men’s weekend softball team.

Alright, so I got off on a bit of a tear there but these sorts of movies are all this ridiculous.  Anyone with an IQ of more than that of their shoe size could negotiate these sorts of problems with ease and the chances of these sorts of circumstances just happening to crop up are right up there with being attacked by a great white shark while riding the subway. That will probably be next year’s Kate Hudson vehicle: How to Lose a Leg in 10 Stops. If I can’t accept the premise from the trailer, I have no hope of making it through the movie itself. Sure I am not the target audience and I thank god for that. I can’t imagine the sort of head injury one would need to suffer to be into this kind of shit, but I imagine it would have to involve an eight ball, a rattle snake and a helicopter.

The second problem I have with this, and I really hate to imply that there are only two problems with this film but I don’t have the emotional fortitude to get into all of them, is what this movie says about weddings, marriage, and vapid whores. It is very alarming to me that so much focus is placed on the wedding itself and almost none at all on the relationship. As mentioned above we have the ridiculous coincidences like the two women being proposed to at the same time so they are looking to schedule weddings in the same month. The focus here, of course, is on the two women and how exciting it is for them to be each other’s bridesmaids and plan each other’s weddings together. There isn’t even a cursory amount of attention to whether or not the relationships are worth a damn nor if the grooms are interested in the weddings. To that point  when they are asked if the grooms should be consulted prior to settling the dates they both answer with a resounding no. It is all about them and all about the wedding.

Now some people may say that I just don’t understand because I am a man and therefore do not share the same relationship with the wedding experience that women do. I guess that is true, but I find it really alarming that there are women out there who would be so caught up in the ceremony itself that it would represent such a large chunk of their lives. When you are nine years old and you are telling your best buddy that your wedding day will be the best day of your life  I think you need to re-evaluate, talk to a guidance counselor, maybe hit up a job fair, and maybe invest some time in a hobby. Seriously, when you start with expectations like that 10 to 20 years ahead of time you are just opening yourself up to disappointment and you should really start socking some money away for the eventual and inevitable marriage counseling.

I have always thought that what makes a person’s wedding day the happiest of their lives is that they are marrying someone they love and with whom they want to spend the rest of their lives (or at least the next five to 10 depending on when the cheating starts). As presented here, and in the sorts of diamond commercials you see around the holidays, the wedding is a be all end all of happiness and if even a single detail is amiss, it will be tantamount to total failure as a human being. You know, because when someone has proposed to you, your first thought should be ‘Badass, he went to Jared!’

So what is next for these people? Pretend for a second that the movie has no hitch and both of them get hitched  on the proper days and we are spared seeing the highly unlikely ‘Anne Hathaway leaping down the aisle in her wedding dress in all her anorexic glory to tackle Kate Hudson’ scene and these two have the perfect wedding day. What then? Is it all downhill from there? Is the relationship going to devolve into her sitting around reminiscing about that one perfect day while her husband does god knows what after work? And how much do you have to suck as a person, to fail so catastrophically at life that your crowning achievement was that you stood in front of people at a time and place of your choosing and repeated a bunch of words to a dude you barely care about as anything more than a place holder?

Getting back to the movie itself, all the proof you need that the focus is off is in the central problem of the movie, that these two are more concerned about everything being exactly right than they are the marriage or their friendship. The issue is easily solved. Move the date or move the venue. If your priorities are anywhere near those of a responsible, well adjusted adult then it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Sure, you can be disappointed that it didn’t pan out exactly the way you wanted, but to resort to tactics at home in a Police Academy movie and act like you are four shows that not only have you gone way off the reservation, but it shows that you are completely unprepared for marriage anyway. If there is one thing you need to have in a marriage it is flexibility and the ability and willingness to compromise. If you can’t do that, you are surely headed for a divorce or murder/suicide.

Why anyone would want to spend 90 minutes with either of these characters is completely beyond me. They are clearly stupid, self-centered, and vacuous. Maybe the reason the grooms to be are fine with being cut out of the planning and experience is because they are looking for trophies for their mantles but, given what is on display in the trailer, the two women in this piece of tripe are best thrown back. Maybe that is what we will get in the sequel in a few years where their perfect divorce proceedings are stymied by booking the same judge on the same day, and he is a thrice divorced curmudgeon who used to own a boat but lost it to his exes and now has to rent a fifth floor walk up on the lower east side. Of course, Matthew McConaughey and Mark Ruffalo are their husband’s lawyers and they end up falling in love, but it is all wacky because of the conflict of interest.

At the end of the day, I find myself both mystified and horrified by the priorities that people assign to what amounts to meaningless ceremony. Does it matter at the end of the day where the service took place or whether or not the DJ played Jungle Boogie at the reception? I feel very sorry for people who miss so completely the things that truly matter in life in favor of minute and ridiculous detail that makes no difference. Is the person you are marrying nice to you? Are you happy? Do you bring out the best in each other? Do you make each other laugh? These are much more important questions to ask than whether or not the flower girl got her steps just right while coming down the aisle. I can’t imagine people like the characters in this movie actually existing but if they do, I pity the poor bastards who marry them.