Ooh, a stoner comedy. Haven’t seen one of those in a while. I wonder who decided… Point Grey. Seth Rogen produced this. That explains a lot.
The Wrong Girls comes to us from producer/writer/director Dylan Meyer, here making her feature directing debut after previously co-writing the massively underrated feminist coming-of-age comedy masterpiece Moxie. I also notice that Meyer is currently married to star/producer Kristen Stewart. In fact, it looks like they met on the set of American Ultra, which is perhaps the last time we got a noteworthy stoner comedy on this scale.
It’s strange, though — I don’t see Meyer credited anywhere on American Ultra. Let me see if I can… yeah, it looks like Meyer was dating American Ultra screenwriter Max Landis at the time. That would’ve been right before Landis and Meyer broke up, I suppose. Granted, Landis is a notorious POS, so there are any number of possible reasons for the breakup. Although that would’ve been right about the time when Stewart broke up Rupert Sanders’ marriage MOVING ALONG QUICKLY.
Stewart plays Frankie, an engineering genius with the creativity and insight to enroll in Stanford. Alas, Frankie says “it’s too hard, I quit” like it’s her personal mantra. Frankie doesn’t have the ambition, the attention span, or the work ethic to finish anything she starts. So she dropped out to put her inventing prowess towards building a better bong, stealing her neighbor’s cable, etc.
But of course this wouldn’t be a proper stoner comedy if we only had one stoner without a lifelong buddy to get high with. Enter Molly (Alia Shawkat, another producer), Frankie’s best friend and roommate. Molly has a preternatural skill for cooking, but she doesn’t want all the stress of running her own restaurant. Thus Frankie and Molly spend all day getting high in their house together, taking just enough short-term gig economy jobs to keep themselves thousands of dollars in debt.
I might further add that Molly has a well-adjusted boyfriend (Josh, played by Zack Fox), which makes Frankie jealous to a degree that isn’t healthy for anyone involved. Though maybe Frankie’s concerns about him are well-founded, it could easily be that kind of movie.
The plot kicks off with Mike (Morgan Krantz), who broke up with Frankie so he could shack up with another girl (Frances, also played by Stewart), who looks and sounds exactly like the woman Frankie might’ve grown up to be if she had gotten her shit together back in college. Frankie gets jealous, one thing leads to another, and a case (literally a briefcase) of mistaken identity puts Frankie into possession of the film’s MacGuffin.
Long story short, Frankie and Molly are stuck with several vials of a new experimental drug. The kind of thing that could get them a fortune on the black market, if they had any idea how and where to sell drugs. They don’t even know what the drug is or what it does. So naturally, they each down an entire vial of the drug — which, again, is a totally unknown substance with unknown effects on the human body! — for a test run. Oh, and their cats (Dio and GG, respectively voiced by Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani) lapped up some of the stuff as well, after a vial accidentally broke.
By some miracle, they don’t die. Seriously, one character (a mad scientist played by Kate McKinnon, which is exactly as funny as it sounds) outright says later on that this should’ve killed them. Instead, the drug turns out to be a hallucinogen that establishes a permanent telepathic link between Frankie, Molly, and their cats. Naturally, while Frankie and Molly are only interested in finding some way to pay their rent, there are certain global superpowers interested in a drug that could potentially be used for mind control and/or world peace. And we’re off to the races from there.
This is getting to be a subgenre in itself. Let’s call it the “criminally desperate renter” subgenre, in which one or two destitute underdogs wander from one self-contained scene to another, getting further and further into legal danger and mortal peril as they work within a tight deadline to get enough money for rent. One of Them Days and Night Always Comes are a couple of recent examples that come to mind. But while those movies sucked, this one actually works.
For one thing, it makes a huge difference that while a “criminally desperate renter” movie is an idiot plot by design, this movie is right up front about how these characters are total idiots. They are, after all, stoners. A stoner comedy only works if the lead characters are idiots, and a “criminally desperate renter” story only works if the lead characters are idiots, so the dovetail works surprisingly well.
Moreover, it’s a stoner comedy about two characters that regularly partake of mind-altering substances, and the premise revolves around an experimental hallucinogen that grants superpowers. Put them both together, and we’ve got a movie so absurdly heightened and stylized that the filmmakers can get away with a lot of outlandish shit.
Similarly, it’s undeniably true that we’ve got a “best friends” plot that follows the established threadbare formula to a T. (Hell, we recently saw the exact same plot play out beat-for-beat in Stop! That! Train!) But then we’ve got that character arc in which the characters learn more about the full extent of their telepathic abilities and how to use them. That puts a novel twist on the character arc of the two characters drifting apart and coming back together.
As for the other characters, the film features a carousel of supporting actors, some of whom are stronger than others. LaKeith Stanfield is playing firmly within his wheelhouse as a badass stuck with the unenviable job of trying to keep these two dumbasses alive. Sadly, Zack Fox fails to register as anything memorable, and the trio of white-clad heavies might as well be cardboard cutouts. Nanjiani and Rogen are great fun, voicing a couple of cats who turn out to be whiny cowards. Geena Davis plays a role that could’ve been played just as well by literally anybody else, ditto for Tony Hale.
I might add that there are quite a few moments when the budgetary shortfalls are readily apparent. This is a common problem with smaller projects, especially for novice directors, and I’ve seen a great many first-time filmmakers do worse than this. Naturally, the heavily stylized and heightened nature of the film goes a long way toward justifying the frenetic edits and flashy lighting that cover up so many of the missing effects. More importantly, between the genuinely funny writing and the character development fueled by potent chemistry, the script is strong enough to compensate for the lack of spectacle. This is most prominent in the climax, when two brainless stoner chicks — who want nothing more than to chill on the couch and have a good time and get along — gain full control of a superweapon meant for world domination and turn it against those who would abuse it.
The best I can say about The Wrong Girls is that it accomplishes everything it set out to do. Even when the plot gets predictable and the spectacle isn’t quite where it should be, the film is still funny enough, poignant enough, and creative enough to make up the deficit. It’s not a masterpiece, but it never had to be and it never tried to be. This is nothing more or less than a sweet, stylish, subversive little comedy that I had a good time with. I’m happy to recommend it.