Film

Bride Wars

Cert: PG

Description: High-powered lawyer Liv and caring schoolteacher Emma are best friends who share the same dream: to be married in the splendour of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Thanks to event planner Marion St Claire, the women both get their wish, just weeks apart, and they excitedly begin to plan every detail of their big days. Then disaster strikes: due to an administrative error, only one of them can walk down the aisle at the dream venue. Reluctant to give up their fantasy, Liv and Emma set about sabotaging each other's weddings so only one of them will be able to tie the knot at the Plaza.

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Dir: Gary Winick.

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Kate Hudson, Candice Bergen, Bryan Greenberg, Chris Pratt, Kristen Johnston

Country: US.

Year: 2008.

Duration: 89mins

Bride Wars fails to impress on the big day

Bad marriage: Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson find their weddings double-booked

By Derek Malcolm
8 Jan 2009

It�s a little early to vote for the worst film of the year. But this awful romantic comedy starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway will surely figure among the candidates at the end of 2009.

They are best friends who, when little girls, watched a wedding at Manhattan�s Plush Plaza Hotel and vowed they would get married there one day themselves. Now they are 26 and engaged to men as bland as themselves, and they go to a marriage fixer (Candice Bergen) to organise the best day of their lives.

The result is havoc � the dates are double-booked and they have to get married at the hotel on the same day. A catfight follows and the bosom friends become bosom enemies.

Gary Winick, who made the much better Charlotte�s Web, delivers a story so ludicrous and soft-centred that none of the actors has much of a chance, and both comedy and romance seem stifled at birth. Everyone concerned seems to have given up halfway through. You can�t blame them.