The Wrong Girls: Dumb and Dumber… and Yet So, So Not
By Karen Gordon
Rating: C-
The world needs more big, dumb stoner buddy comedies featuring women as leads.
The Wrong Girls, which boasts an impressive cast led by Kristen Stewart, aims to be that and misses spectacularly. Stewart’s star power isn't enough to rescue this film.
The problem falls squarely on the script. The film, written and directed by Dylan Meyer, is a muddled, jumbled story that keeps undermining itself. It’s not that the film doesn’t have funny ideas or moments that are funny — in fact, it’s overstuffed with interesting ideas — it’s just that most of them don't land.
What’s meant to be the dumb luck that gets our protagonists into increasingly troubled waters is partly resolved about a third of the way into the movie. The rest of the film makes us wonder why we didn’t just stop it there. It seems to have no real purpose other than to have our klutzy heroines be, well, klutzy.
Stewart plays Frankie, best friends and roomies with Molly (Alia Shawkat). The two are stoners who can't really get it together, are behind on the rent and must come up with the money very quickly or be evicted — or “orphaned” as Molly says.
Frankie is brilliant but had a nervous breakdown and flunked out of Stanford’s engineering program. The shock and embarrassment of that have caused her to give up and become an underachiever, although it sticks in her craw.
One night Frankie goes to a bar partly to confront her ex, Mike Z (Morgan Krantz) who is now dating a woman named Frances who is her doppelganger, except that Frances wears glasses. Frankie ends up with the glasses which leads to a case of mistaken identity. A rough-looking guy named Not Metal Head Dave (LaKeith Stanfield) buys her drinks at the bar and takes her back to his place.
She’s well in her cups and thinks he wants to party, but that’s not his game. Not Metal Head Dave isn't his real name. He’s been hired by a Dr. Olsen (Kate McKinnon) to give Frances a secure steel briefcase that she’s supposed to deliver to someone named Dr. Chapman (Geena Davis).
Not Metal Head Dave tells Frankie the contents of the case hold the most “important scientific breakthrough of our time.” She’s clearly drunk and out of it and doesn’t recognize the name the way the real Frankie would and should, but he gives into her anyway. It’s one of the many questionable narrative flexes in the movie.
Frankie brings the case home and manages to figure out the combination to the secure lock (in one try), discovering that the case is filled with vials of liquid containing what she and Molly think is a new drug. They elect to stash it in a secret place until they can figure out what to do.
What they don't know is a lot, including that there are three Danish thugs on the trail of the case. Axel (Thomas La Barbera Christensen), Dagmar (Thor Knai), and Fritz (Thomas Nicholson) work for someone named Mr. Kock, who wants what’s in the case. It also gives the film a chance to do wordplay with his name. The trio of thugs trace the case to Molly and Frankie’s house and, while the two are out, steal everything they have.
All that’s left are their two cats (voiced by Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani) and the hidden case containing the vials with the drugs. And so, Molly and Frankie each take a vial figuring, ‘what the heck?’ The drug turns out to be a psychedelic that ultimately gives them telepathic powers.
With pretty much everything they own now gone, they decide they'll make their money by selling the drugs so they can pay their rent. They put the cats, with whom they now have telepathic communication, in carrier backpacks and head out.
Dumb comedies are so much fun when they work, and the elements of what make them work are present here: the film is good natured, but the overcomplicated plot is too much and just not funny enough. The Wrong Girls is proof that films that may look like they were casually put together aren’t so easy to pull off.
The Wrong Girls. Written and directed by Dylan Meyer. Starring Kristen Stewart, Alia Shawkat, LaKeith Stanfield, Geena Davis, and Kate McKinnon. In theatres August 14.