Bride Wars

As best friends who become dueling bridezillas, Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway are the right stars for the era of megagirly princess feminism. In Bride Wars, it’s funny, and telling, that when they land a meeting with New York’s most fabled wedding planner (Candice Bergen), they’re already so steeped in the minutiae of matrimony that it’s clear they could do the job just as well themselves. Both women have spent their lives dreaming of a June wedding at the Plaza (you wonder how recently they’ve checked their daddies’ stock portfolios), but due to a logistical screwup, they end up booking their nuptials there on the exact same day.

It’s not clear why this is such a big problem, but it is. Neither one will budge, which leads to an escalating battle of the sorority-bitch gambits: One dyes the ? other’s hair blue, revenge is served up at a tanning ? salon, and so on. Directed by the usually more supple Gary Winick (13 Going on 30), Bride Wars isn’t really a romantic comedy, since the two grooms-to-be have about as much presence as waiters. The comedy is all about these bazooka-brained brides and their holy right to treat a wedding as more important than, you know, marriage. Hudson, her sunny good cheer baked to a dominatrix flatness, and Hathaway, her long-limbed smiling charm all a-gangle, go at their frilly ? obsessions like joyless rival executives. Bride Wars pretends to be a satire of wedding mania, but since there’s virtually nothing else to the movie, the satire comes depressingly close to endorsement. C