(make of that what you will)
Cast: Casting was pretty spot on. Kirsten Dunst can play an uptight control freak well. Lizzy Caplan can do the misanthropic disillusioned thing in her sleep. Isla Fisher, well, you saw her in Wedding Crashers, I assume. The thing is, all of them add some new edges to their character types that are rarely seen. I'm so used to seeing Adam Scott as Ben Wyatt that it's jarring to see him as a different type of character. Rebel Wilson is a lot less cartoonish than she normally is, which is nice. James Marsden...I still don't know what to make of him. There's several others I'm forgetting. They sustain a pretty large cast.
Plot: Overall it works well. No one is a saint or treated like one. They all have some pretty serious issues that, thankfully, they didn't feel the need to fix by the end. If I had one complaint, it would be with the wedding dress MacGuffin, which I thought was beneath the rest of story. Mostly, this is a smart, well-crafted, character-driven dark comedy. At times, it tried to be something much lighter and it didn't work a well for me. At times it doesn't know which tone it wants to have and felt decidedly uneven as a result.
Elephant in the Room: So, this is like Bridesmaid, right? I get that on paper it sounds like it would be. This is going for a much narrower audience though. The characters are much darker. The jokes hit harder. The appeal is less broad. It mostly doesn't want to be Bridesmaids and largely succeeds at that. I am not at all surprised that this has such a limited release (Note: limited does not mean bad). Please, don't go into this expecting Bridesmaids. That would not be smart.
Perspective: Normally, I have the problem of seeing a movie, liking it, then overselling it to people. For this, I have the opposite problem. Everyone I saw it with loved it. I liked but no where near as much. I'm not one for jumping to "there's something I'm missing that everyone else got" because I'm not. That's generally a cop-out. I quite enjoyed this, but after witnessing a love-fest for it, I find myself trying to explain what my issues with it were with it when I'd normally focus on the parts that I liked. This isn't a complaint. I just find it interesting how subjective a reaction to a movie can be.
To Sum Things Up:
I've been wanting to see this for a while and am glad it expanded to where I live. In a year full of pretty mediocre comedies so far, this was a refreshing change of pace. It is not for everyone by any means. Plenty of laughs and a great handling of the characters. It's not completely polished, but what is. You know how almost getting an A on a test can be more frustrating than completely bombing it? That's how this was for me.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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