Ambition can be slippery in the hands of the stoner. With her debut feature, The Wrong Girls, Dylan Meyer sets her aspirations at the height of her two perpetually red-eyed heroes. Frankie (Kristen Stewart) and Molly (Alia Shawkat) are the coolest potheads you never knew; they might be late on rent, but they’ll happily invite you in for a hit on their ingenious MacGyver bong and indulge your strung-out rambling with a smile. Like Frankie and Molly, The Wrong Girls answers the world’s cosmic mysteries and tribulations with a shrug: international drug rings, late bills, and bad vibes are bummers of equal merit and handily salved by the humble joint. Meyer’s movie doesn’t endeavor to ascend beyond a good time with your best friend, but with weed this good, why should it?
Frankie and Molly are the kind of best friends that know each other’s thoughts. That begins as hyperbole: the girls breeze through their lazy, laconic days in perfect syncopation, trading joints and galaxy-brained munchie recipes without so much as a nod. Problems come and go — their equally stoned landlord drops by to collect late rent, and Frankie isn’t the biggest fan of Molly’s boyfriend, Josh (Zack Fox) — but they’re nothing a couple bong rips can’t solve.
But after a case of mistaken identity lands Frankie with a trunk full of expensive psychedelic drugs, the heroic tokers see dollar signs. They’ll sell the drugs, pay the rent, and kick their feet up — only after sampling the product themselves, naturally. The drugs provide a powerful trip and strange side effects: Frankie and Molly suddenly find themselves able to communicate telepathically and move objects with their minds. If that wasn’t enough, the rightful owners of the drugs, a gaggle of Danish tough guys, catch the scent and send Frankie and Molly on a psychic goose chase of stoned serendipity. It’s almost enough to kill their buzz.
The Wrong Girls is a Capital-C Comedy that champions its myriad punchlines over narrative momentum and cohesion. It’s also a refreshing outlier in a male-dominated space: with a few notable exceptions (Gregg Araki’s Smiley Face remains the preeminent text), stoner comedies often don’t expand their aperture past dank-loving dudes. Stewart and Shawkat are effortlessly charming, spinning a friendship that feels like it started years before the cameras rolled. The movie’s jokes, though, are a bit more labored.
Meyer’s movie hits its highest marks in throwaway gags and punchlines; “I told you I don’t speak… Hollish,” Molly drolls to her Danish captors. Kate McKinnon shines as a Germanic scientist behind the wonderdrugs, dishing improvised one-liners that claim some of the film’s better laughs. But The Wrong Girls shudders under its own intentions and too often goes for jokes that were better left alone. Molly and Frankie’s cats end up getting a taste of the drug, too, and their new, psychic voices (provided by Seth Rogan and Kumail Nanjiani) never find much more than a groaner.
Meyer does an admirable job selling the lives of potheads, but hollow signifiers — 40s of Colt 45, white girls yelling “fuck the police” — frequently threaten her movie’s good will. Shawkat is a reliable comedian, but Stewart, who’s leveraged her post-Twilight fame to ascend as one of her generation’s most enigmatic actors, locks up in the face of her punchlines. Absent of the tics and glares that comprise her textbook repertoire, Stewart is simply, vacantly cool — it’s not nothing, but it doesn’t serve her jokes enough to earn a laugh.
The Wrong Girls is a labor of love spanning 14 years since its inception, a stoner comedy that follows the mythical gestation of Superbad. “If Seth and his idiot friends can make movies like this, why can’t I? I mean, I’m an idiot, too,” Meyer tells In Review Online’s Brandon Streussnig. 14 years is enough time to overthink things; for all its faults, The Wrong Girls shines in its capacity to take it easy. A proper hangout flick knows when to let its hair down, to meander side roads bleary-eyed and curious. Meyer lets her stoners look stupid, even if that means a fumbled punchline every few minutes. And those idiots — Meyer’s words — exude the sort of enviable friendship that makes the buddy comedy so alluring. The love between Frankie and Molly is the kind you want to come home to, to bitch about a hard day at work, to light up and forget it for a while. It’s the sort of thing for which you’ll excuse a few bad jokes.
DIRECTOR: Dylan Meyer; CAST: Kristen Stewart, Alia Shawkat, Cate Blanchett, Tony Hale; DISTRIBUTOR: NEON; IN THEATERS: August 14; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 39 min.
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