Bride Wars

Premiere Olivia Putnal

Sometimes the only funny stuff is in the trailers, but not so here. Kristen Johnson was especially adept at stealing some scenes.

Film Threat Stina Chyn

A chick flick in the purest sense--it's not about men or falling in love--and is quite funny.

San Francisco Chronicle Reyhan Harmanci

If you came to see two pretty girls in wedding dresses wrestle, you won't be disappointed.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Bride Wars is pretty thin soup. The characters have no depth or personality, no quirks or complications, no conversation.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Bride Wars pretends to be a satire of wedding mania, but since there's virtually nothing else to the movie, the satire comes depressingly close to endorsement.

LA Weekly Robert Wilonsky

A step backward for Hathaway, Bride Wars is one more step into the quicksand for Hudson, who's spent the nine years since ""Almost Famous wandering the rom-com wasteland in search of an exit strategy; this movie, which she exec produced, ain't it.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

A dopey if largely painless romantic comedy.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A chick flick that makes its chick characters - and by extension its chick audience - look like hateful, backward toddlers, and there is something wrong with that.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Bride Wars really does not capture the mood of the moment. It comes from a different time, a different planet.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Like moussed hair and inverted-pyramid shoulder pads, this sloppy, sloppy slapstick is an artifact from the 1980s.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It represents a missed opportunity on every level. As a black comedy, it fails. As a satire of the bloated wedding industry, it fails. As a drama about friendship triumphing over all, it fails.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

With artifice as layered as the tiers of a marzipan cake, this resembles nothing so much as a stale Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedy.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A shrill, mechanical comedy.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

No cues are needed to understand the plot, which feels computer-generated and barely serves to sustain an hour and a half running time.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

The idea of a revenge comedy isn't necessarily a bad one, Bride Wars simply fails at it despite having the formidable duo of Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway, who in their own distinctive ways usually command the screen.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Bride Wars is about as funny as a cringingly awkward wedding toast.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

An insipid comedy in which the women are shallow, acquisitive, backstabbing, selfish harridans.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Exceedingly lame.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

A girlie romantic comedy with tired slapstick pranks but not an ounce of self-respect or intelligence.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Bride Wars has possibly the worst comedy idea since "Springtime for Hitler," with almost no room for redeeming camp.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The movie pretty much blows.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

By comparison, Bride Wars makes "Sex and the City" seem like Jane Austen.

TV Guide Perry Seibert

All in all, that's not a bad premise for a lightweight chick flick, but director Gary Winick and an army of three screenwriters can't come up with a single fresh comedic idea.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Never gets off its high-concept stool long enough to explore what makes weddings so exciting and nerve-racking and treacherous. It flounders instead in juvenilia and bitchiness.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Predictable, lazy and as overprocessed as Kate Hudson's hair, this thoroughly joyless movie also possesses a deep nasty streak, making it loathsome when it might have been merely annoying.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

It's both slack and bloated; I've been to Catholic wedding masses that had more zip. I think it clocked in at fewer than 90 minutes, but it seemed to last longer than most marriages do.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Hudson has, if nothing else, traded up: last winter she was stuck in "Fool's Gold."

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

There may be a trenchant satire to be mined from our culture's materialism-warped wedding madness, but Bride Wars instead opts for graceless, flailing, poorly choreographed slapstick performed by characters who suggest a dumbed-down tour production of "Sex And The City."

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

I'd be hard-pressed to name another recent film so deeply noxious, soul-sick, and unfunny.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The first big-studio movie released in 2009 has a damn fine chance of being the worst. Bride Wars isn't just chick-flick hell for guys, it should numb the skulls of moviegoers of all sexes and ages.