Chris Lee of The Daily Beast reports from Sundance:
Explosive bathtub puking? Check. Lengthy monologue about blow-job semantics? Affirmative. Copious cocaine consumption? Strip-club bathroom sex? A suicidal Xanax binge? Check. Check. Check. Such are the many and varied wonders of the pitch-black indie comedy Bachelorette, starring Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher and James Marsden—a movie that premiered here in Park City on Monday that your rangey correspondent managed to watch in a secret ski-chalet screening Friday morning.
Early on in the film, a druggy, barely hinged party girl portrayed by Lizzy Caplan characterizes one of her friend’s romantic entanglements as being “like a Jane Austen novel on crack.” That’s as apt a description as any for Bachelorette, an antic caper shot through with doses of Neil LaBute-esque cross-talking dialogue. Sight unseen, the movie has already been tarred by comparisons to last year’s breakout hit Bridesmaids for the films’ shared marital milieu and shoot-milk-out-your-nose-laughing raunch factor.
Let’s cross our fingers that The Bachelorette eschews the nihilism that doomed Bridesmaids.
One reason to be hopeful: the wonderful Kirsten Dunst. Bridesmaids was the product of its star, Kristen Wiig. (She is the one most responsible for its thematic problems — and its success with connecting with its target audience to become such a box office hit.) Dunst, on the other hand, is an acting prodigy, highly regarded since her Golden Globe-nominated performance in Interview with the Vampire.
Looking through Dunst’s filmography one year in particular stands out. In 1999 she starred in the drama The Virgin Suicides and the two satirical comedies Drop Dead Gorgeous, and Dick. Dunst was only 17 at the time. She turns 30 this year at the end of April.
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