Given its fusion of the spheres of materialistic excess and idealized romantic love, the immense presence of the wedding within popular culture should come as little surprise, being arguably the single most prevalent 'happy ending' plot point and often an easy way of concisely suggesting a lifetime of resolution and happiness. As such, the treatment of weddings within mainstream film tends to take on a somewhat birfucated approach, either challenging and questioning the reality of such a romanticized social construction, or relishing in the fun and overt sentiment of the sort of wedding everyone has been taught to yearn for. With this in mind, Bride Wars becomes an intriguing example of Hollywood's prevailing treatment of the 'wedding film' subgenre - while its premise initially suggests a critique and send up of the lavish excesses of popular weddings, the film can ultimately not avoid caving to syrupy cliché and delivering an adoring treatment to the social institution it initially promised to challenge. <br /><br />The film as a whole reflects this rocky tonal imbalance, which only serves to expose many of its deeper and more insulting flaws and shortcomings. Despite a vaguely absurd sounding premise (two best friends, both engaged on the same day, are forced to fight for their ideal wedding venue, causing a rift and fighting between one another), the film retained promise, with 'sad but true' kernels of profundity (how easily a friendship can be thrown to the winds and the common theme of the superficial flashiness of weddings overcoming the feelings involved, among others) which could have resulted in a satisfactory satire in the hands of a capable director or careful, intricate script. Unfortunately, Bride Wars could not be more sorely lacking on either front, and as such, the film as a whole quickly descends into being more of a disaster than either protagonist's pending weddings, with the rare successful trace of broad satire often undermined by the screen writing's tendency to cave to easy, sap- fraught cliché and plot-be-damned circumstance, making even its occasional high points feel deflated and redundant. <br /><br />Otherwise the film could be used as a textbook example of lazy, sloppy screen writing and a checklist of mainstream romance centered (if not outright 'rom-com') comedy clichés, pounded into the audience's head through drawn out, dreary slapstick lacking the necessary acerbic spark to be any sort of funny, and a particularly wearisome array of cathartic emotional speeches. If there is a single positive note among the deluge of negative, the film does boast a climactic twist which manages to be slightly unpredictable and vaguely realistic - both shocking surprises in a film which could not be farther from either quality overall. Of course, this brief moment of innovation is quickly superseded by yet another sloppy, cliché- inundated patch of screen writing, but for a matter of minutes, the film hints at the exponentially superior film which might have resulted from its chaotic, sickening mess. Even the musical score is woefully unoriginal, succeeding only in making each increasingly banal development all the more difficult to stomach.<br /><br />It is a common practice in many such female geared mainstream comedies to have frustratingly underdeveloped male characters, and Bride Wars gleefully carries on such a trait, with the barely glimpsed male figures reduced to cardboard cut-outs, or pantomimes of masculinity which fulfill only a single note of characterisation or narrative function (the "sweet guy", insensitive jock, etc.). One scene has Kate Hudson's character lying in bed with her fiancé, expressing her sorrows at how alone she feels and completely ignoring his attempts at consoling and comforting her - while a particularly insulting moment in a film chock full of them, it also demonstrates how utterly unimportant the men in the film are whatsoever. However, a less common genre trait is to have the female characters painted in just as superficial, reductionist terms as the men in the story, yet Bride Wars proves just as determined to reduce both sexes to insulting stereotypes, including, to a worrisomely large degree, its protagonists. <br /><br />As such, the film's only real saving grace is the luminous presence of Anne Hathaway. Despite being stuck with a tiresomely familiar role (the overly caring woman who forgets to look after her own needs), Hathaway refuses to succumb entirely to convention, and instead infuses her character with a spark of gutsy enthusiasm and her seemingly unquenchable trademark charisma and quirky charm - the only mercifully palatable element in the film, and clearly a far better piece of acting than such a film deserves. Unfortunately Kate Hudson does not match up, making the sympathies of the viewer, intended to be evenly distributed among protagonists, feel substantially one sided. While Hudson is not a disaster by any means, she simply appears to float by on autopilot, refusing to devote enough energy, warmth or comedic spark to breath life into her character, and as such coming across as somewhat of a selfish, unlikeable miser, a black hole of characterisation. Supposed comic relief from Candice Bergen as an obsessive wedding planner translates instead into only more tiresome drivel, and her contribution of a hilariously out of place narration only further draws to light the ignorant and lazy screen writing, as if refusing to simply let the narrative develop on its own. <br /><br />But what is perhaps the most objectionable to Bride Wars is how seemingly inoffensively bland it is, as if the filmmakers and cast could not muster up the energy to be as outlandishly terrible as most other films with as little going for them. As such, Bride Wars is not only resoundingly poor on just about every possible front, but unenthusiastically so, making the film not only cringe-worthy to watch, but also rather boring. Even fans of the genre in search of light, superficial entertainment are unlikely to derive much enjoyment from such an altogether uninspired and tiresomely predictable piece of cinematic refuse.<br /><br />-2/10