Lifetime Review: 'Brutal Bridesmaids'

When her doting boyfriend Michael (Kevin A. Walton) proposed to her, Jessica Curtis (Zoila Garcia) imagined a lovely wedding ceremony for the two of them and their closest friends. For her part, Jessica invites five of her friends to serve as her bridesmaids. The quintet consists of her roommate Melanie (Amanda Tavarez), her business partner Kristin (Jamie Fritz), her cousin Sloan (Amanda Diaz), and her two older friends Binky and Holly (Karlee Eldridge and Lauren Buglioli). At first, it appears that the time leading up to Jessica and Michael's wedding will be days of having fun and celebrating friendship.

But it doesn't take long before Jessica and Michael's plans for a conflict-free wedding fall apart. After coming together, Jessica's bridesmaids quickly start getting at each other's throats thanks to their vastly differing personalities. Sarcastic jabs are traded and fights become plentiful, with Jessica caught in the middle. It's when things escalate beyond petty insults that the soon-to-be bride begins to worry. It seems that within her inner circle, someone is plotting to ruin Jessica's special day in the grisliest way possible. Can she figure out who it is before it's too late to save her wedding--and her life?

It's ironic how, after Jessica accepts his proposal, Michael notes that he wants their wedding to be of the "no drama, no stress" variety. Not only because the days before his and Jessica's wedding become plagued by stress and drama, but because it seems the writers took the drama-free approach when working on Brutal Bridesmaids. If you're expecting grand soap opera-esque catfights, look elsewhere because the squabbles between the bridesmaids rarely get to that level. When they do, they end as quickly as they start and are never juicy enough to justify that being the bulk of the movie's "action." That's the main problem with Brutal Bridesmaids: it's a "thriller" that starts slow and ends slow. The film gets off on a bad foot with its opening scene. Mumbled lines, exposition dumps, and excessively loud background music abound while Zoila Garcia sets the stage for her mediocre Lifetime/feature-length film debut. She has some good moments as exasperated bride-to-be Jessica, but she stumbles over a few of her lines and overall just seems to be going through the motions.

To Garcia's credit, it's not like the script does her any favors. In stark contrast to her circle of friends, Jessica Curtis is an almost aggressively vanilla protagonist. She has all the trappings of a Lifetime heroine (young and pretty, tragic past, successful career, & loving partner) without any of the flavor. Between that and how oddly complacent Jessica is about her friends selfishly spoiling the leadup to her nuptials with their immature fights, you might find it hard to care if Jessica gets her happily ever after. Even with his reduced screentime, Jessica's fiancé makes for a more compelling character than her. Kevin A. Walton is lovably laidback as Michael, making him a chill alternative to his fiancée and her chaotic entourage. Michael also casually points out to Jessica how inconsiderate her so-called best friends' behavior is. Jessica doesn't heed his words and Michael isn't around enough to do anything about the quarreling bridesmaids himself, but it's a cathartic scene all the same.

As for the quarreling bridesmaids themselves, some fare better as characters than others. Karlee Eldridge's Binky (short for Bianca) is the most memorable of the crew. After going to waste in the painfully dull Fatal Getaway, Eldridge gets the chance to show her talents as the brash and always-down-for-a-drink Binky. Her sassiness is the most entertaining to watch, but she's also given a surprisingly touching scene with Jessica that shows Binky is more than just a wild party girl. Beneath all her antics is a woman who has her share of insecurities and truly values Jessica as a friend. Lauren Buglioli is more lowkey entertaining as Holly, the neurotic mess of the group, and Amanda Tavarez gives a likable performance as roommate Melanie, the comparatively most down-to-earth person in Jessica's clique. While she has some snappish moments (the worst being her childish jealousy of Binky), Melanie is otherwise a genuine person who only has Jessica's best interests at heart.

At the back of the bachelorette brigade stands Jamie Fritz's Kristin and Amanda Diaz's Sloan. Kristin spends most of the movie being a blandly written and performed side friend while Sloan (despite being decently portrayed by Diaz) stands out as the nastiest bridesmaid of the bunch. She randomly starts a baseless fight with Melanie at one point and her repeated rants about her unfaithful ex-fiancé and his bridesmaid lover are callously pessimistic at best and dually sexist at worst. That aforementioned fight does come with the benefit of leading to Binky's best scene of the film. After Sloan thoughtlessly ruined a friendly get-together by hurling out cruel insinuations, Binky putting her on blast for being so relentlessly bitter is incredibly satisfying. Seeing karma come back to bite Sloan later on is just as delicious.

WARNING: Spoilers Below

Fritz's performance doesn't improve any once Kristin is revealed as the evil wedding saboteur. But it's not like she has much time to, seeing as how Kristin isn't unmasked as the villain until the last five minutes of the film. Her flat line deliveries are in good company with Kristin's generic "You Abandoned Me/Stole My Man" motivation. Before her eleventh-hour attempt to murder Jessica, however, Kristin wasn't a very intimidating antagonist. Her schemes range from giving the bridesmaids mild rashes while dress shopping to chasing Binky around at the bachelorette party. Kristin's worst offense during the movie is her poorly directed assault on Michael, and even then, there's no lasting damage. The other girls' catty bickering does more to derail the wedding than anything Kristin does. In the end, Brutal Bridesmaids' antagonist is just as forgettable as its heroine.

(Also, with how much Sloan got on my nerves, it was a little annoying how she got to swoop in and be the hero at the end. The fact that she got to claim she was right in her gross "All Bridesmaids are Treacherous Sluts" stance added to the irritation.)

Spoilers Over

For a movie whose premise had so much melodramatic potential, it's almost impressive how badly Brutal Bridesmaids wastes it. Instead of hair-pulling, dress-ripping fights a-la Dynasty, the brawls between the titular women are limited to snide remarks and passive-aggressive slights. A bunch of grown women tepidly sniping at each other for little to no reason gets old really fast and the lack of Lifetimey thrills is palpable as the movie crawls along at the pace of a drunk groomsman. Throw in a few lackluster performances and two central characters who have all the depth of an impromptu toast made by that same drunk groomsman and you've got a boring trainwreck on your hands. So if you had to choose between attending the wedding of someone you absolutely hate and watching Brutal Bridesmaids, I'd recommend the former. At least then you'll get some free cake and champagne out of it.

Score: 2.5 out of 1o booty blaster shakes.