Written and Directed by Dylan Meyer | 100 min | ▲▲▲
Welcome to August, when studios release the movies they couldn’t quite figure out how to market to audiences who have spent the summer being pummelled into submission by blockbusters. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Consider the oddball pleasures of Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, The House on Oak Street, or The Rivals of Amziah King, all in cinemas now. If you remember what variety at the multiplex looks like? Here it is, at least until the next superhero movie comes around.
Joining that august company is The Wrong Girls, a millennial pot comedy. It’s nice to see this particular strain of picture — which arose from the haze of the 1970s — reimagined by another generation ready to pick up the bong of inebriated hilarity, if you will.
The film is helmed by Meyer, partner of Kristen Stewart, who stars as Frankie, a deeply dense mechanical wizard/pothead living in the San Fernando Valley. (Frankie has an 818 tattoo, a reference to the local area code.) She lives with two cats and her platonic bestie (and a creative chef), Molly (Alia Shawkat). Yes, this is a Runaways reunion.
As with so many comedies of this strain, the central characters need two things to be happy: weed and money. Their landlord (Chris Estrada) is as much of a pothead as they are but, annoyingly, still expects to be paid rent. Frankie and Molly hatch a plan to sell the unidentified drugs they find in a silver briefcase (belonging to Frankie’s doppelganger, Frances, whose origins are never explained), or perhaps extort money from a rich local asshole (Tony Hale) after acquiring deeply compromising photos of him with his penis dunked in dips.
This isn’t really a spoiler, since it’s right there in the IMDb synopsis, but when Frankie and Molly try the mysterious concoction, it gives them psychic powers. Then, when they spark up a joint, they gain access to telekinetic abilities. One of the movie’s better jokes is that these two stoner pals are so perfectly in sync that they barely notice they’re reading each other’s thoughts. Things get considerably weirder when they start picking up the thoughts of their cats, Dio and GG, voiced by Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani, respectively.
Naturally, there are also antagonistic forces hunting for the drugs, including a team of beige-suited Danes, an action dude named Not Metal Head Dave (LaKeith Stanfield), and a couple of flabbergasted scientists, Dr. Olsen (Kate McKinnon) and Dr. Chapman (Geena Davis).
All of this plot is about as coherent as a cloud of smoke. The drugs are the product of experiments on deep-sea octopi, which gives the movie a potentially fun aquatic sci-fi undercurrent. But the opportunity to do anything particularly interesting with those fantasy elements is pretty much ignored.
The cats are another missed opportunity. Having Rogen and Nanjiani voice telepathic cats is a pretty good starting point. Having them spend most of their screen time being complaining assholes is less inspired. Why get Seth Rogen and then not allow him to be funny? (Please see The Invite for evidence of how funny Rogen can be when someone actually gives him something to work with.)
The movie also has an issue with its friendship drama. Nothing much in the preceding plot really lays the groundwork for the inevitable bust-up between Frankie and Molly (beyond a Frankie peeking at Molly’s texts), so when it arrives at the end of the second act it feels less like an emotional crisis and more like the screenplay checking a box.
The broader appeal of The Wrong Girls will no doubt depend on whether you consider yourself part of the 420 community, or simply someone who enjoys watching attractive people make increasingly poor decisions while transporting cats. But the movie could have been a whole lot funnier with a whole lot more script polish.
What it does have going for it is an appealling hangout vibe and two magnetic co-stars in Stewart and Shawkat, who carry the sillier, shaggier elements of the movie one toke over the line.
