Bachelorette: Story of (True) Friends

the Plot:
The film opens with Regan (Kirsten Dunst), a miserable careerist in her early thirties, having lunch with her longtime friend, Becky (Rebel Wilson), who reveals that she's getting married to her moneyed boyfriend, Dale (Hayes MacArthur).

Becky flashes her ring :)

Regan processing the fact

Although secretly jealous and embittered by the fact that her "fat friend" is now engaged, Regan notifies their two other friends, the sardonic coke-sniffing Gena (Lizzy Caplan) and the rowdy party girl Katie (Isla Fisher).

sharing the news, barely containing her true feelings

Gena flits from one bad into another

Becky works in retail, surviving with the help of her gay freelance stripper friend

Six months later, the women are preparing for Becky's impromptu bachelorette party that evening; Gena flies in to New York from Los Angeles, and the four meet at the hotel, when Katie announces that she has brought cocaine for all of them to do.

At the dinner party that night, Gena runs into her ex-boyfriend Clyde (Adam Scott), whom she sees flirting with Dale's younger sister, and Katie runs into Joe (Kyle Bornheimer), a former classmate and pot dealer. Trevor (James Marsden), the best man, gives a speech at the party, and Gena, high on cocaine, reveals in her toast that she first met Becky when she caught forcing herself to throw up in the high school bathrooms.

After the dinner, the women go to their suite, where Katie's gay co-worker arrives and does a striptease for the women, but Becky stops it after he jokingly calls her "Pigface", a cruel nickname of hers in high school. Becky leaves the bachelorette party, and Regan, Gena and Katie are left in the hotel room where they drink and continue to do cocaine.

Drunk and high, the three accidentally rip the dress, and Katie gets a nosebleed and stains it with her blood.

they try to get the hotel maid to fix it but was informed the tailor is off-duty

they bump into the guys going out for a stag party

Regan contacts the tailor who made the dress for Becky, who reluctantly agrees to open the store for them in the middle of the night.

 

After unsuccessfully searching the store for a dress that will fit Becky, and the one that is one size smaller for her is the one Regan always dreamed of having for her own wedding, Katie reveals that she can sew, which leads the women on a hunt for thread and a sewing machine.

Regan rather licks the pavement than letting Becky have that dress. So Gena asks her to do it so that they can settle the matter

Trevor text messages Regan asking the girls to stop by the strip club the men are at, which they agree to, in order to get Clyde's help with the dress (Clyde's mom used to sew their high school's play dresses).

yup. pretty sums up Katie all right

 There, Joe shares some pot with Katie in the gents whilst Regan chats up with Trevor, flirting.

Gena takes the dress into the strip club's bathroom where she attempts to clean it. There, she has a conversation with a stripper who begins using the dress as a towel and toilet paper, unbeknownst to her, and thus smearing semen and whatnots on it.

showing appreciation for the stripper's wise words

Regan, furious when she finds out, gets into an argument with Gena, who insists they confess everything to Becky, and it is revealed in the argument that Gena had an abortion once, with Regan driving her to the clinic when Clyde didn't show up. Gena leaves the club with Clyde and the dress.

And as they are having an argument in the Metro, Clyde blurts out that he didn't drive Gena to the clinic years ago because he was so sad that they had to abort the baby.

 

They arrive at Clyde's house and his mother agrees to help sew the dress, whilst insisting Gena to put some pants on. As the dress is getting fixed, Gena and Clyde get to talk and patch up somewhat.

Gena finds out that Clyde still keep a tab on her. in this pix, he's taking pictures of a Gena sad face pancake and tagging her on Facebook

Trevor asks Joe to take Katie home so that he can have Regan alone for the night, good to go mode ON, apparently

Meanwhile, Joe attempts to woo Katie, who is heavily intoxicated and high on cocaine, and Regan ends up having sex with Trevor in the hotel bathroom. Joe and Katie spend the night in the hotel swimming pool, where Katie reveals that she attempted suicide the year before whilst getting high.

i feel sorry for Katie... sobs

Becky calls and asks Regan to come to her room so they can talk; in their conversation, it is revealed that Regan is bulimic, and that Becky covered it for her in high school. Just as Regan begins to tell Becky about her dress, Becky's mother arrives, and they begin to prepare for the wedding.

Gena wakes up naked next to Clyde in the morning, rushing back to the hotel with the dress.

Gena is really serious about her war with pants. hahah

Back at the hotel, the party planner is unable to find the missing dress but Regan manages to divert their attention into focusing on Becky's hair and make-up instead.

freaking out

Gena asks a maid at the hotel to help her dry clean the dress before bringing it to Becky; meanwhile, Katie locks herself in the bathroom and overdoses on Xanax. While Regan forces Katie to vomit the pills, she ends up puking all over Regan's dress. Regan, in an attempt to buy time, convinces Becky to ride to the wedding in her pajamas and put on the dress when she arrives.

Becky, irate, screams at her mother and Regan in the taxi.

for once, Regan has nothing to say to calm Becky down

Gena arrives to the wedding with the dress, still stained with blood, yelling "I save the day!" They quickly get Becky to change.

At the moment when the wedding march sounds, Becky confides her insecurity, that people think she's too fat for Dale, which Regan retorts back with their longtime mantra "F@ck everyone!"

i love the way Dale looks at Becky, truly showing how he's feeling at the moment: the luckiest man in the world!

Becky ends up walking down the aisle while Regan and Gena sit on a bench and watch the ceremony, where they are joined by Katie, who arrives late.

if looks could kill

At the reception, Joe and Katie talk and kiss, Regan tries to sleep, and Clyde gives an obscene speech about him and Gena, ultimately confessing that he wants to spend his life with her. The film ends as the four women make up and dance together at the party.

the Review:
i was rather attracted to the underlying theme of the film, it's about friendship. friends you can always count on, someone to prop you up, shove their fingers down your throat, someone to pick you up and drive you to the abortion clinic, someone who would be your friend even when they are most jealous of you at that point and yet walk you through your wedding day.

a friend. in its truest sense.

Regan is a person, comparable to Hannibal Lecter. She's jaded, miserable and frustrated with her life, yet she helps Becky to plan her wedding for 6 months. on the eve of the wedding, it's only natural that she blows her steam, more so with Gena, the snarky and Becky the twat, the original B-faces Gang.

it is rather hurtful to think that in a 4-girls gang, yet there is a 3-person inner circle. Regan, Katie and Gena have one thing in common, they don't have physical issues that Becky is facing yet, believe it or not, each has their own problems, their own demons that they have to fix.

for instance, Regan hates her job where she attends to young kids having cancer. it is a noble job but as the kids undergo chemotheraphy which is hell, more so to the kids, her soul gets ate up bit by bit that she ends up hating what she has to endure to make the kids feel much better.

Gena, she couldn't work Clyde out of her system. the mere mention of Clyde's attending the wedding convinced her to come from Los Angeles. she's a mess, drifting from one night stand into another, in short, she's being a slut. but perhaps the abortion, Clyde's abandonment of her at that vulnerable time, being 15 years old at that point, makes her what she was..

Katie, a good soul but so messed up, she's not functioning. it saddens me when she confesses she was so high, she almost killed herself once. it's good that Joe's being a gentleman. that though i could hit his head for giving Katie's pot when she asked for it, i have to admit, he's basically a good person, redeeming himself by not getting it on with Katie when she's too inebriated to even know who he is.

i suppose, Becky is the luckiest person. she's a good friend, taking the flak for Regan by letting everyone think that it was her with the bulimia problem. no wonder she ends up with Dale, a true gentleman who's really into her.

Regan and Gena, they might fight with each other, but they are so close that mouthing off each other is so natural, it won't break their kinship.

i wonder how these people gonna end up in the future but as the movie ends, i realise, it's ok as long as you have your friends with you..

btw, that was gross of Clyde to describe his moment of clarity. nevertheless i do dig his relationship with Gena, they look sweet together! love Adam Scott in this one :)

Now You See Me: fastly paced + sleekly engaging = absolute MAGIC!

Trailer:


Plot:

 



Four street magicians—J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher), Jack Wilder (David Franco), and Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson) — are brought together by an unknown benefactor and, one year later, perform in Las Vegas as "The Four Horsemen", sponsored by insurance magnate Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine). For the finale, a member of the audience is invited to help them in their next trick: robbing a bank. That member in an audience is Étienne Forcier (José Garcia), the account holder at the Credit Republicain de Paris.
 
Forcier is apparently teleported to his bank in Paris, where he activates an air-duct that vacuums up the money and showers it onto the crowd in Las Vegas.

 

Upon discovering that the money really is missing from the bank vault, FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is called to investigate the theft and is partnered with Interpol agent Alma Dray (Mélanie Laurent).


They interrogate the Four Horsemen, but release them when no explanation can be found.

 

Rhodes later meets Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), an ex-magician who makes money by revealing the secrets behind other magicians' tricks.
 

Bradley was in the audience and deduced that the Four Horsemen stole the money weeks before, and manipulated the audience's perception of current events. |



Tressler later on meets Bradley and advises him to not continue his pursuit to expose the Four Horsemen. Bradley cockily refuses.



Rhodes, Dray, and Bradley attend the Four Horsemen's next performance in New Orleans. The group's finale involves them stealing roughly $140 million from Tressler's bank account and distributing it to the audience, composed of people whose insurance claims had been denied or reduced by Tressler's company. Rhodes attempts to arrest the Four Horsemen, but they escape with help from audience members who were earlier hypnotised as part of the performance.

An infuriated Tressler hires Bradley to expose and humiliate the Four Horsemen in their next performance. Later, while researching the Four Horsemen's background, Dray learns about rumors of a secret society of magicians called "The Eye" and suggests to a skeptical Rhodes the case might be tied to a magician named Lionel Shrike, whom Bradley had exposed 30 years earlier and who was so embarrassed that he undertook a dangerous underwater stunt and drowned.

 
The Four Horsemen are located in New York, but they escape during the raid to arrest them.

 

However, Wilder is killed when he crashes a stolen car during a high speed chase and it bursts into flames and explodes. The remaining Horsemen vow to continue and complete their final performance, stealing a safe made by the same company that made the safe Lionel Shrike died in. Then they perform their one last show at 5 Pointz during which they seemingly vanish into thin air, transforming into loads of money that is showered on the crowd.


Rhodes and the rest FBI agents continue to chase them but apparently the Four Horsemen have escaped.

Later it's found out that the money shower turns out to be fake and the real money is found stashed in Bradley's Range Rover. Bradley is then assumed to be the fifth Horseman and arrested, though it appears he was framed.

Rhodes visits Bradley in his cell. Bradley explains the only way the safe could have been removed was if Wilder was still alive but they would have also needed an inside man.

 

Bradley now realizes that Rhodes is the fifth Horseman.

 

Rhodes tells him he wants Bradley to spend the rest of his life in jail in penance for exposing Lionel Shrike. The reason why Bradley did that was because he so desperately wanted to join The Eye but was rejected by Lionel Shrike.

 

The Horsemen are now rejoined by Wilder, whose death was staged. They finally meet their benefactor and are surprised to find it is Rhodes. He welcomes them into "The Eye."
 

Rhodes later meets Dray on the Pont des Arts in France and is revealed to be the son of Lionel Shrike, the magician who drowned years ago. He masterminded and designed the Horsemen plot to obtain revenge on those involved: Bradley, for humiliating his father; the Credit Republicain de Paris and Tressler's company, who refused to pay the insurance on his father's death; and the company that produced the substandard safe used in the trick that led to its failure.

 

Dray, however, decides not to turn him in. When Dray sees the lock with a key that Rhodes magically handed out in front of her eyes, Rhodes proclaimed, "One more secret to lock away". As soon as Dray locks the lock on a chained fence with all of the locks that have been locked, she throws the key into the Seine.

In a post credit scene in the extended cut, The Horsemen are seen arriving at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas. They find crates marked with the sign of the 'Eye'. The movie ends with them looking for the four key cards to open the crates that hold their new equipment.


the Pictures:
 



  

















the Riviu:

the movie got raving reviews such that it's up for a sequel. i as usual wiki-ed them up. but the spoilers really don't spoil the movie for me. in fact i was drawn in from the very beginning that i only paused after the credits rolled in. it was that GOOD!

of course, you'd wonder about plot plausibility but yet you cannot manage to escape its tantalising pace. the chemistry between the Four Horsemen, the beautiful special effects, the fitting soundtrack simply spellbound you.

watch it yourself and please, leave logic behind as you are in for a neat magic trick :)