Movie Nation

You could, if you wanted, sit in a dark theater and simply check off the simularities between the blockbuster “Bridesmaids” and this fall’s “Bridesmaids” knockoff, titled “Bachelorette.”

Female bodily function jokes? Check. Inappropriate come-ons on an airline flight? Check. Crass, crude and fearlessly frank talk about sex, once reserved for the fraternity house? Check. Wedding dress disasters? Check-eroonie.

“My So-Called Life” and “Fast Ties at Ridgemont High” references, singing along with the over-used “I’m Gonna be 500 Miles”? Uh, no.

Enthusiastic cocaine snorting, Xanax and alcohol abuse, abortion jokes…wait, say what?

Writer-director Leslye Headland aimed for “Bachelorette” to out-Bridesmaid “Bridesmaids.” She’s taken an equally accomplished cast (and a better-looking one) and hurled them at the same heartbreak, fiascos and emotionally overwrought pathos of an impending wedding, filled their dialogue with F-bombs and amped up their behavior on coke — not the diet kind either.

And what she’s given us is an “Oh no they DIDN’T” romp that never quite romps, a teary-eyed string of taking-stock moments without tears, and a pretty serious squandering of major league movie talent.

The four “B-Faces” have reunited because one of their number is winning that race to the altar, 13 years after graduation

Kirsten Dunst is icy, cool and bitter as Regan, the 30something, hyper-organized professional woman, at a loss as to why she hasn’t been the first in her quartet of high school pals to marry. That the dizzy, loose Katie (Isla Fisher) is still single, THAT she understands. Jenna (a fierce Lizzy Caplan) has been living a drug-and-booze fueled nightmare since a romantic high school trauma.

“Jenna brought COCAINE,” Katie crows.

“Let’s use our inside voices,” Regan coos.

And Rebel Wilson, of “Bridesmaids,” is to be the bride. One of the real rewards of the film is figuring out, eventually, what connected her to the others, how the plump girl nicknamed “Pig Face” got to hang with the hotties.

Regan is in the home stretch of snapping at one and all, organizing this fete as the maid of honor. But over a tiny window of time the weekend of the wedding we get to see much of her good work come undone.

It’s part reunion movie, part wedding disaster, and both parts are filled with bridesmaids behaving badly.

A guy flirts with Katie, who doesn’t remember him from way back when.

“We were in French class together.”

“I took FRENCH?”

An overdose warrants this exchange — “Shouldn’t we get an ambulance?”

“No. She does this every weekend.”

One B-Face comforts another B-Face on some long ago trauma, which a third B-Face jealously overhears — “You guys had an abortion WITHOUT me?”

And so on.

That’s what Headland goes for — cheap, broad shocks. And even if the situations are mostly recycled, the words can jolt a laugh out of you. It’s a well-cast film, with Dunst playing against her natural earthy warmth, Fisher (“Confessions of a Shopaholic”) doing the loose-and-dumb thing well. But Caplan (“127 Hours”) is the real break-out here. She let’s us see the impulsive mood swings of an addict and manages to keep Jenna likable and every bit as fierce as Regan, even as her ex-beau (Adam Scott) tells her, “It’s not cute anymore.”

James Marsden is also cast against type as the player/best man, a heel with a certain in-your-face charm.

It’s just another movie aiming to show women who are “Hangover” crude, with a hint of wedding wish-fulfillment fantasy. The transitions from silly to “serious” don’t work. At all. We don’t invest in anybody, so there’s no mourning for the picked-on bride, the wedding or wedding dress that these self-absorbed brats are ruining.

So “Bachelorette” is like the abortive bachelorette party the film trots out — complete with stripper — a scene cut short in order to flip our expectations. It’s a tease for a movie it was never going to be.

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, pervasive language, and drug use

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, Isla Fisher, James Marsden, Rebel Wilson, Adam Scott

Credits: Written and directed by Leslye Headland, a Weinstein Co. release.

Running time: 1:31

A big Friday and Saturday put “Django Unchained” over the $30 million mark for the weekend, allowing it to claim bragging rights over “Les Miserables” among the new releases.

“Les Miz” did better on opening day, so it still has earned more at the US box office, and it is cleaning up abroad.

But “The Hobbit” continues its furry-footed march as weekend box office warrior, racking up another win in its “Unexpected Journey.”

“Parental Guidance” is besting the other holiday comedies — “Guilt Trip” and “This is 40,” clearing $29 million by midnight Sunday. At this pace, “Guidance” could pass “This is 40” in a week or two. Then again, nobody expects Billy Crystal’s comedy to have legs.

Jennifer Westfeldt calls it her “accidental trilogy.” The actress, writer and now director has made three relationship comedies — “Kissing Jessica Stein”, “Ira & Abby” and now “Friends With Kids” — films which “embrace: the romantic comedy format and “subvert” it at the same time.

Can’t find a man in the crowded Manhattan dating scene? Try dating a woman (“Kissing Jessica Stein”). Fall in love at first sight? Sure, but wait for the affairs, parental complications and everything else that seems just as impulsive that follow (“Ira & Abby”), which suggests that there are other states of togetherness and happiness than marriage.

Of an age when everybody your age is having children, but you’re not done dating, figuring out who to be with and why? Try to have a child with a friend (“Friends With Kids”).

“All these movies are saying ‘Why do we have to do it the way everybody else does?’ In all three films, the main characters are all trying to do that, find a new way.”

That’s what “Friends With Kids,” which Westfeldt wrote, stars in and directed, reaches for, “a way to beat the system, ‘selfish singles,’ the people who think we can have it all” without the romantic implications in the word “family.” It’s a “nervous, high strung” (New York Magazine) film winning great reviews filled with praise for how “sophisticated” and “perceptive” it is. Because even though Westfeldt and her longtime companion Jon Hamm (a co-star in the movie) have no children, they’ve made a movie that picks up on the shifting priorities and changing face of love in a relationship as children enter the picture.

“Jon and I have been feeling that ever-increasing sense of being out of sync with our peer group,” Westfeldt says. “So many people in our lives — dear friends — are making this epic, profound life transition, just in the past four or five years. It’s been interesting to observe how they all handle it, because they’re all approaching it differently…I have friends who have chosen to do it alone, with a sperm donor, friends who have decided to have a baby together without a romantic relationship. My managers, best friends, sat me down a few months after we wrapped the film and told me they were having a child together. They live near each other and they’re going to work it out. Life imitating art. They had their baby just this past week.

“We’re showing that shift in people, that you can’t really know what it’s like until it happens to you.”

Westfeldt rounded up a support system of friends — co-star Adam Scott and Jon Hamm are old pals, and the film also stars Hamm’s “Bridesmaids” co-stars Kristen Wiig, Chris O’Dowd and Maya Rudolph. That gives “Friends With Kids” a chance to make a bigger splash than Westfeldt’s earlier films, “even if it has more of the serious stuff — sad moments — in between the laughs.”

Westfeldt tried to avoid the normal sitcom situations and one-liners in an effort to give her film that subversive quality she so enjoys. Thus, nobody in the movie utters that sitcom cliche to her character, “So when are YOU going to have a baby?” But since since her co-managers took the film’s message to heart, might Westfeldt succumb and join all her “Friends With Kids”? She has a TV series she’s writing and will star in. Could maternity fit in with those plans?

“Jon and I have been steeped in this subject matter for a pretty long time,” she says with a  laugh. “We are pretty happy the way we are, and we have a lot of great kids in our lives. We love being the honorary aunt and uncle, but if we’re lucky, we’ll tackle that challenge when the time comes.”

Madonna, of all people, should know you can’t manage to be daring and demure in the same movie. Daring and often dull, yes. The Queen of Self Reinvention, an exhibitionist seemingly since birth, she seems to have lost her nerve while making “W.E.”, her film directing debut. She eschews the sordid and reaches for sad and sweet, here. And those sentiments remain just beyond her reach.

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