‘The Wrong Girls’ Review: Just the Right Amount of High On Its Own Supply
If there’s anything Hollywood has lost in its adaptation to an ever-changing industry, it’s the art and success of the theatrical comedy. It always comes across as a miracle from the heavens when one can get a theatrical release. Even when they do, so many are franchise-based, like this year’s Scary Movie. So when a stoner comedy like The Wrong Girls comes out, its existence in the modern film landscape is even rarer as part of a subgenre.
The Wrong Girls aims to be a return to the heights of screwball endings of the stoner comedy of old. Writer/director Dylan Meyer, in her debut feature, does a solid job of playing to the beats that make these stories of inseparable friendships work while adding her own delightfully silly visual absurdities to the mix.
The general beats of the story here go exactly as you’d expect, and Meyer plays the template close to the chest. Thanks to the co-leads Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat forming a memorable comedic duo, the film’s derivative beats are never a complete hindrance. The result is a delightfully absurdist stoner comedy that gets as high off its own insane stupidity as much as its leads do throughout the film.
What is The Wrong Girls about?
The Wrong Girls follows the everyday hijinks of Frankie (Stewart) and Molly (Shawkat), two best friends who rip bongs on the regular and smoke so much weed they can communicate via dry coughs.
The girls go through struggles we see in many of these buddy comedies, being inexplicably late on their rent payment to Jose (Chris Estrada), and working gigs to get as much money as they can. The girls open up to each other about life struggles like Frankie dropping out of Stanford or Molly’s unattained chef dreams as she often confides in her relationship with her boyfriend Josh (Zack Fox).
One fateful night, Frankie decides to go to find her ex and call him out for now dating an eerily similar-looking girl to her Frances (also played by Stewart). While there, she gets mistaken for Frances by a mysterious secret agent figure (LaKeith Stanfield) who gives her an ominous briefcase that contains a scientific breakthrough of some kind.
The next day, when Frankie and Molly open the case, they discover it contains a bright pink fluid. They think it’s a drug of some kind, take it, and get more laced than they ever have before. Little did the two know that their possession of the case would send them on a collision course across a crime plot between three Dutch henchmen hunting them down and a data scientist’s search to find them for scientific testing. This results in an on-the-run caper of cartoonish proportions.
The film is gleefully dumb, even in the midst of some shakier writing
It may seem silly to say, but there does exist a difficult line to ride when making a comedy like this the proper amount of idiotic. If you’re a bit too loony to the point where virtually nothing of tangibility exists within the world of your film, a lot of emotional weight can be lost, or the humor can appear to be trying too hard.
If you’re too much in the other direction, you can’t distinguish yourself enough from other comedic contemporaries. The Wrong Girls tends to be at its best when the film is at one with the surrealist aspects of its comedy, both in writing and visually.
Throughout the film, the ladies can speak telepathically to their cats, Dio (Seth Rogen) and GG (Kumail Nanjiani); at one point, they both smoke enough weed mixed with the pink substance to gain telekinetic powers, and Stanfield’s straight man role is credited as “Not Metal Head Dave.”
It’s a film that is laid-back about its own telepathic lunacy. The movie clicks with the absurdity of its situational comedy just as much as it does with the simplest of silly jokes, and all with a healthy dose of fisheye lens and wonderfully colored high montages to boot.
On the whole, however, the film falls a bit short of being completely distinctive since it’s reheating a tried-and-true comedic blueprint. This would be less of an issue if there weren’t an equal number of gags here that run far too long compared to ones that remain quite funny.
The talking and cursing cats are fairly funny at first but have their charms wear thin quite fast near the film’s climax. A weird accent bit from Kate McKinnon and sporadic appearances from Tony Hale are where the film starts to become a bit too try-hard with its comedy.
Luckily, the duo of Frankie and Molly are the glue that keeps this rolled blunt from falling apart. Both Stewart and Shawkat sell even the weakest of quips here to a tea. Even when we hit common beats of these comedies, like the best-friend breakup before they inevitably make up again, they are sold so well by the performances that more predictable beats never sink the ship. The two actresses are completely in tune with the movie’s bizarre and off-kilter wavelength.
Final thoughts on The Wrong Girls
If you’re looking for something to completely reinvent the screwball or stoner comedy wheel that movies like Smiley Face or Repo Man built the foundation for, then you might be better off looking elsewhere. But The Wrong Girls is a sturdy enough exercise in the sheer stupidity that makes a stoner comedy work and is further bolstered by the chemistry between Stewart and Shawkat.
The Wrong Girls is a solid feature debut for Dylan Meyer, but most importantly, it’s a stoner comedy that’s just the right amount of high on its absurd weed supply.
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