Newsflash: Women smoke weed too. But they’ve largely been boxed out of headlining big-screen stoner comedies.
The Wrong Girls (August 14, in theaters) seeks to right that gender-disparity imbalance, enlisting megastar Kristen Stewart and Arrested Development alum Alia Shawkat for a pot-fueled odyssey about best friends who wind up in the middle of a mind-altering conspiracy. Unfortunately, without anything approaching a fizzy rhythm or a dazed-and-confused sense of humor, this THC adventure proves a slapdash buzzkill. It’s all seeds and stems, no sticky-icky.
Frankie (Stewart) and Molly (Shawkat) live in a messy L.A. apartment decorated with cat paintings, alien figurines, and an enormous smoking contraption they’ve dubbed “bong-atron.” Prone to lying on their couch staring up at the TV affixed to their ceiling, they’re going-nowhere doofuses covered in haphazard tats and clownish clothes, be it the female-body t-shirts that Molly favors or the orange short-sleeve button-down that serves as Frankie’s uniform as a delivery person for Kwik Thingz.
Molly likes to bake elaborate weed-infused treats (like brownies with blue cheese), and both are fascinated by a nature show involving giant squid. That creature of the aquatic deep factors significantly into The Wrong Girls, although not in a manner that produces actual chuckles.
Frankie is wary and hostile toward Josh (Zack Fox), Molly’s boyfriend, because she fears that he’ll steal her away. Yet at the film’s outset, the primary object of her wrath is a paramour who’s attending a nearby concert with a girl who looks exactly like her. Upon confronting the two at the show, Frankie’s doppelganger Frances (also Stewart) breaks her glasses. Frankie dons them, and she’s promptly mistaken for the girl—who works at a scientific lab—by a musician who, upon removing his big-wig disguise, earns the nickname Not Metal Head Dave (LaKeith Stanfield).
Not Metal Head Dave brings Frankie home, where he gives her a very important briefcase that she’s supposed to deliver to a scientist. However, the following morning, she can’t remember much of anything and doesn’t complete that task, instead discovering that it houses mysterious vials before storing it in an outdoor dryer for safekeeping.
These initial hijinks are paced by writer/director Dylan Meyer (Stewart’s real-life wife, which explains a lot) with moderate jauntiness that isn’t enough to let the action truly kick into gonzo gear. That’s a persistent problem throughout, as is a composed formal approach that contributes to the generally low-fi energy.
Before long, Frankie and Molly are chugging the enigmatic liquid and embarking on a hallucinatory trip that Meyer dramatizes like a wonky funhouse scene straight out of The Monkeys. While they don’t immediately deduce this, the glowing drug has transformed them into telepaths who can hear not merely their own thoughts but those of their cats GG (Kumail Nanjiani) and Dio (Seth Rogen)—if not, strangely, the inner musings of anyone else. Rogen and Nanjiani quip endlessly as the attitude-y felines and simply manage to deliver one excruciating line after another, to the point that it’s a mercy whenever they’re off-screen.
Stewart and Shawkat have believable chemistry, but only the latter is a convincing stoner. At every madcap turn, Stewart comes across as forced, as if she were doing “wacky” versus naturally being it. Neither is served well by a story that, with the introduction of its villains, begins to faintly resemble a two-bit variation of Dude, Where’s My Car?
A trio of Danish men in matching white suits covet the briefcase and, therefore, Frankie and Molly, whom they view as valuable human test subjects for the experimental potion, and they exist solely to keep the heroines on the move. The protagonists attempt to make a quick buck by selling the magical drug at a Stanford reunion party thrown by a creep (Shawkat’s fellow Arrested star Tony Hale) so they can pay their overdue bills and rent, and after they stumble into another moneymaking venture, they’re compelled to flee capture and dodge bullets, all of which is the height of dreariness.
Blackmail schemes involving compromising photos and a run-in with Not Metal Head Dave’s employer Dr. Chapman (SNL alum Kate McKinnon)—who developed the serum—strive for zaniness. Yet Meyer doesn’t have a feel for zonked-out hijinks, staging them with a dearth of zippiness or ridiculousness.
Strained in every regard, The Wrong Girls plays like an imposter, right down to the main characters’ affinity for extreme music; the cats’ punk-metal names are corny, Molly looks like someone who picked up her Megadeth tee at Walmart, and Frankie’s repeated description of things as “metal as f---” is similarly affected, underscoring the proceedings’ phoniness.
A clear sign of The Wrong Girls’ direness is the fact that McKinnon, doing a “funny” Danish accent, makes the most amusing impression. That’s not a particularly difficult achievement considering that what passes for hilarity is Molly frequently saying that their pursuers are speaking “Hollish” (because she thinks they’re Dutchmen from Holland).
Much helter-skelter tumult defines the film’s latter going, as everyone tries to corral the women and they learn that their telepathic powers are paired with legitimate telekinesis. Such a loopy supernatural twist is ripe for absurdist exploitation. Meyer, though, barely does anything with it, save for an egregiously forced marionette-ish finale.
Stewart and Shawkat’s commitment to this one-note bit is admirable if misplaced, and at a certain juncture, The Wrong Girls loses the plot, throwing various out-of-the-blue bits at the wall in the vain hope that one will stick. Almost none do, be it the duo’s efforts to rescue a cardboard cut-out of Celine Dion (whom they randomly adore) or recurring mentions of the Danes’ Big Bad employer, whose name is Mr. Kock (get it?).
In a single encounter with a video game-playing teen stoner, Stewart is more charming than in the rest of her scenes combined, and Shawkat is likewise best when toning down the silliness and being genuine around Josh. Those moments, regrettably, are sparse, subsumed by lots of tedious chaos.
Perhaps viewed under the influence, The Wrong Girls might appear less sloppy than simply pleasurably scruffy. More likely than not, however, it would just make one hungry—not only for snacks, but for a higher grade of cinematic ganja goofiness.
