‘The Wrong Girls’ Review
While it’s not unlike the dime-a-dozen action-comedies that have been in full force since the ‘80s, Dylan Meyer’s The Wrong Girls is much sillier and far more entertaining than its contemporaries. Perhaps it’s the refreshing perspective of women getting high and stumbling through hijinks that makes this Pineapple Express-adjacent adventure a breath of fresh air. Maybe it’s just the sincerity of watching two friends demonstrate their commitment to one another that finds the heart within a by-the-numbers stoner comedy. Either way, Meyer’s directorial debut is one of the funniest films of the year and the kind of movie you only want to watch with your best friends in a shroud of smoke, laughing uncontrollably at the most absurd in-joke that you relate to more than you understand.
What has always made the stoner comedy variation of a buddy cop movie interesting is that it often stems from a place of love. These aren’t two unlikely friends put together against their wishes to solve some case. They’re two friends who happen to stumble on something beyond their purview, willingly helping one another to get the other out of a mess. Much like how Walter helps The Dude get his rug back, only to further complicate things in The Big Lebowski, The Wrong Girls also escalates through well-intentioned actions between the best of friends. With kinetic direction and an immediately palpable chemistry between its two leads, Meyer presents a thrilling adventure through Los Angeles that has a ride-or-die friendship you want to spend more than just 100 minutes alongside.
It all starts with overdue rent, but quickly spirals out of control when Frankie (Kristen Stewart) leaves Molly (Alia Shawkat) in charge of figuring out their financial crisis as she goes to confront her ex-boyfriend, spotted with another girl who looks eerily similar to herself. A classic case of mistaken identity puts Frankie in possession of a mysterious substance, given to her by “Not Metal Head” Dave (LaKeith Stanfield). Hungover the next morning, Molly and Frankie find themselves in a bad place when they discover their favourite buffet is closing down, pushing them to drink the mysterious substance. There’s a stoner-brained rationale for doing so that audiences will get if they too have been burned by their comfort zones being systematically threatened by capitalism. Regardless, the result is telekinetic and telepathic abilities, and multiple parties hunting the two women down across LA for the briefcase of unknown drugs.
The Wrong Girls is a hangout movie, through and through. The plot is merely a means to get from one vibe to another. As such, your mileage will vary on whether the antics of two potheads making all the wrong decisions will cure what ails you. There’s a bit of hostility between Frankie and Molly at times, usually stemming from Frankie’s unwavering disdain for Molly’s boyfriend, Josh (Zack Fox), but the film is mostly just two people trying to make the best of increasingly messy situations. They scheme together—telepathically, of course—and joke about harrowing scenarios that they should not be involved in, both as a means of coping and because that’s just how they are when they’re together. Meyer’s screenplay isn’t nonsensical actions so much as it is two people in a haze being constantly reminded of the preoccupations they’ve bonded over.
Most importantly, though, The Wrong Girls is hilarious. If a film is going to just keep ramping up the stakes, it also needs to keep the audience laughing throughout the chaos. The film’s three henchmen chasing Frankie and Molly (played by Thomas La Barbera Christensen, Thor Knai, and Thomas Nicholson) around the city are humorous European stereotypes confronted with dimwitted actions by their American targets. Tony Hale plays an unsavoury Stanford graduate who hosts a reunion for his fellow alumni that serves as the prime location to sell drugs. GG and Dio are Frankie and Molly’s two housecats that are dragged along through their misadventures, but what makes them more than just cute accessories is that they too can communicate telepathically with their owners—and they’re voiced by Kumail Nanjiani and Seth Rogen, respectively. Kate McKinnon and Geena Davis round out an impressive cast with hilarious performances as two scientists completely dumbfounded by Frankie and Molly’s every action.
There’s definitely a comfortable approach to the plotting of The Wrong Girls, which leads to a lot of predictable situations that are handled unpredictably. The wholesomeness of Barb and Star go to Vista del Mar is injected into the kind of action-comedy drivel that now haunts streaming services more often than multiplexes. However, it’s because of that wholesomeness that The Wrong Girls feels far less derivative than it sounds on paper. The film has a soft, textured feel thanks to Todd Banhazl’s cinematography, and the characters’ lives feel authentically meandering—they’ve lived a life up to this point, and it has put their dreams on the back burner. It’s a relaxed movie with substance. That kind of interiority for a film like this often struggles to get past feeling manufactured.
Friendships on film can have the power to carry a film through thick and thin. While nothing in The Wrong Girls is more than slight, the strength of its core relationship between Frankie and Molly is enough to drive away the feeling that something more should happen. Plenty happens, but what you’re really looking for is to go anywhere with these two stoners. It’s in the same vein as Paul Feig’s studio comedies, where the reason you rewatch the movies is not to see whether Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy get the bad guy, or Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne become friends: it’s to hang out with the funniest people you know and just have a good time. The Wrong Girls is delightful at every turn, shunning narrative heft for camaraderie and good times.
