There’s something pleasing about watching women be brazenly wrong. Perhaps it feels like a rebellion against the ways the world forces women to be constantly on: to be managers of the home, dutiful employees, curators of perfectly poised self images, and mothers looking after everyone else’s emotional burdens. It’s almost always nice to see women defiantly stick up their middle fingers to the responsibilities foisted upon them. It’s this ethos that put Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise in a league of its own, the film that refreshed the buddy/on-the-road comedy with working-class besties sticking it to entitled, patriarchal men. In recent years, more comedies have picked up the torch: Ethan Coen sends friends Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) on the road in a world full of dicks (literally) in Drive-Away Dolls. Even more recently, Adele Lim’s ensemble road trip Joy Ride subverts expectations about women’s sexuality.
The Wrong Girls doesn’t just add to this canon — it raises the stakes one more level. Writer-director Dylan Meyer’s debut follows Frankie (Kristen Stewart) and Molly (Alia Shawkat), two slacker-stoner besties who barely work, scramble to make rent, and spend most of their waking hours sparking up. Between them they have two cats, zero ambition, a bong made out of a rubber duck and a ship in a bottle, and about one shared brain cell. They’re like the girl version of Dumb and Dumber: nimrods, as they’re commonly referred to. Shawkat plays the rare and special desexualized bimbo, totally in her element as a lazy, loser stoner. Her performance is buoyed even further by Zach Fox, who plays her buttoned-up boyfriend and character foil. Stewart’s performance is less believable, lacking the looseness needed to portray someone so lackadaisical. She delivers “aimless stoner” like she’s trying to score an A in class, all of her seriousness and laser-focus at odds with the character.
“Smooth brain” really is the best way to describe the type of comedy and chaos that unfolds in The Wrong Girls (and I mean this in the best way possible). When Frankie and Molly accidentally come into possession of a suitcase filled with fluorescent liquids, their pot head minds are quickly convinced they have their hands on some high-quality psychedelics. Trying to sell the drugs lands the duo in the middle of a scientific research battle, on the run from villainous Danes trying to get the suitcase back — all while tripping through a tentacled new world that also grants them telekinesis.
Meyers’ keeps The Wrong Girls in the stoner-comedy pocket, rendering “dumb humor” (the dick jokes do keep on cumming) through a glitter-punk lens. Under the guidance of cinematographer Todd Banhazl — who we also have to thank for Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drop Dead” music video — The Wrong Girls avoids the flattened visual saturation common in contemporary comedies (like Bridesmaids or People We Meet on Vacation) as well as the pink pastiche of exhausted Girl Bossery (like I Feel Pretty and Crazy Rich Asians), opting instead for refracted lighting and neon hues. Ty Segall fills the score and soundtrack with alt, women-fronted bands like Tacocat and Sheer Mag (and a great cameo from Mannequin Pussy). In honoring the tradition of the stoner film, Meyer understands the simple, sometimes essential pleasures of good ol’ 13-year-old humor, and the beautiful art form that is finding creative ways to slip penis references and 69 into things.
In terms of what The Wrong Girls is trying to say, perhaps there is something rebellious in two not-so-bright women refusing to be stressed or driven. Meyer just ever-so slightly reminds us about the very real realities of our present day. Brief yet distinct one-liners cue us to our world now, one where Oasis is back together and the all-you-can-eat buffet spot is closed due to “uncertainties in the buffet sector” (a recession indicator and eulogy for the real-life closure of Souplantation in Los Angeles). (And then there’s that one Epstein joke). Through it all, Frankie and Molly are just two girls, smoking away the modern-day pains.
When it comes to the chemistry between the two best friends, the duo (and the film) really reaches their highs. The Wrong Girls is as much as a stoner flick as it is an ode to how beautiful it is to be a girl living with your best friend. The Wrong Girls understands how you create a shared inner world, often filled with wacky and wonderful paraphernalia (say a Celine Dion cut out or a bespoke cardboard cat castle), and a freaky, almost (or maybe literally) telepathic connection.
Meyer succeeds in bringing us into this intimacy, interpolating the world that is the close bond between two best girl friends. They might save the day, but only in all the wrong ways possible, rebuking responsibility only until it comes to their friendship with one another. Come for the dick jokes, stay for the cat montage.
