At least the title is honest.
Every now and again, I watch a movie because my friend makes me, and this was that. It’s just not my kind of thing – plain and simple. I don’t care about these characters. They annoy me. They could be shot with lasers, sent back in time, elected president, probed by aliens, trained in martial arts by dinosaurs, shaven bald by a horny Mickey Mouse, abducted by a cult that worships Billy Mays, and/or eaten by the Lollipop Guild, and I would not care. So why should I care about their less interesting lives? And during those brief moments when I do care, the film is more painful than funny, triggering all my social anxieties and making me want to die.
The problem, unfortunately, is that it has too many redeeming qualities for me to dismiss it entirely. The stupid police officers are amazingly rather funny at times, and Emma Stone absolutely steals the show. Her performance near the end slays me. Honestly, had the film been more about the girls, it would have been better by leaps and bounds. That’s all it would take.
I’m rather confused about the presence of the 1970s. Somehow, the film seems to take place in two decades at once, without explanation. 1970s music makes appearances in various forms – although the scene with the best use of older music features “These Eyes,” which is from the late 1960s – and there are ‘70s pop culture references on T-shirts throughout. The opening, however, is the part that screams 1970s, and it is a brilliant opening credits sequence – one of the best I’ve ever seen. It’s a shame the rest of the film couldn’t maintain that level of quality.
