Review | Film review: Bride Wars – Angelababy and Ni Ni kill your brain cells in excruciating Chinese remake
Obnoxiously vacuous and relentlessly mind-numbing, this Chinese remake of Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway vehicle is even worse than the original
It is a sign as much of the height of vanity as the demise of good taste that a certified dud like Bride Wars should receive a glossy makeover in today’s China. At once obnoxiously vacuous and relentlessly mind-numbing, this Chinese remake of Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway’s VIP ticket to Hollywood’s hall of shame has the distinction of being even worse than the original.
Ma Li (Ni Ni of The Flowers of War) and He Jing (Angelababy Yeung Wing of that expensive wedding with Huang Xiaoming) have been best friends since their school days, and the two beautiful ladies, now 28, are advised by their parents to marry their boyfriends ASAP or, as one honestly puts it, risk “bad karma forever”. There’s no pressure, in other words; it’s just the end of feminism as we know it.
After they propose to their respective partners, Ma Li and He Jing are confronted with the biggest obstacle yet to their happiness. And it has nothing to do with their choices of grooms – who remain an afterthought – and everything to do with the nuptial arrangement: the brides-to-be must fight for the same date when their wedding planner (He Jiong) mixes up their bookings at a very specific venue.
And so an infantile “war” breaks out between the two – she dyes her hair blue, she puts red paint on her face – and everyone in the audience loses. Devoid even of the Hallmark platitudes in Tony Chan Kwok-fai’s earlier co-directed efforts, Hot Summer Days (2010) and Love in Space (2011), this consumerist farce is all superficial posturing and no human emotions. Avoid.
Bride Wars opens on October 29
