Rebel Wilsons Girl Group is one of the worst movies ever made
Rebel Wilson fails to revive her sputtering career with Girl Group, a female-fronted comedy that aims to tap into Pitch Perfect’s fandom — even namedropping that movie directly. But Wilson’s latest will only have fans of Pitch Perfect singing the blues.
Written, directed, produced, and headlined by Wilson, Girl Group plays like Pitch Perfect meets The Mighty Ducks meets The House Bunny, but only if all of those movies were awful. Wilson stars as Tassie Young, a reckless, washed-up former girl group star who’s inexplicably tasked with being a mentor to a group of teen girls who have dreams of pop stardom.
There might have been a clean or even comedic way to set up all that backstory. But Wilson favors a hasty first act that races through establishing her former band, Girlfriends, as private school besties who went from a school talent show to the top of the charts, only to be destroyed by Tassie’s desire to go solo. When her first album flops hard, she devolves into the party scene and anonymity. But when the band announces a reunion tour some years later, Tassie is shocked to learn she’s been replaced. Her resulting tantrum leads to a DUI that lands her in court-mandated community service, which involves this absolute disaster of a human being tasked to mentor impressionable youth. This all happens so quickly that it seems Wilson is bored by the story she herself wrote.
And that’s just the first act. This 96-minute movie is paced as if it’s on a cocaine high, and it’s just as coherent as that suggests. Girl Group hastily introduces subplots around Tassie’s proteges, their sisters, new bandmates, and a rival dance coach, while working towards a big girl group competition climax that’s underwhelming instead of entertaining. A plot so absurd and overcrowded might have worked if Girl Group played like a parody of showbiz movies. (Think Walk Hard.) But Wilson’s clumsy and oblivious attempt to reclaim her reputation as a hilarious actress only proves she’s an atrocious filmmaker.
Girl Group is alarmingly unfunny.
Wilson jams nearly every moment of her movie with some attempt at humor, but much of them fall flat, creating a pile of punchlines that spark groans rather than laughter. Some of these jokes are lazy bastardizations of well-known barbs. Like when the new Girlfriends member (former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger) says, “I don’t want beef, I’m vegan.” It’s impossible not to think of 3OH!3’s Don’t Trust Me, with the much-memed lyric, “You tell your boyfriend, if he says he’s got beef / that I’m a vegetarian, and I ain’t fucking scared of him.”
Somehow, she got reputable comedians and stars to join this mess, including Sally Hawkins, Jennifer Coolidge, Randall Park, Chris Colfer, Shaznay Lewis, and Melanie C. But none can elevate Wilson’s deadly cringe dialogue, littered with buzzwords, haphazard pop culture references, crude jokes, and pitiable wordplay, like a bandmate informing her, “You’re an ex-Girlfriend now!”
Then, on top of all this dross, Wilson offers physical comedy that ranges from miming snorting a line of cocaine to awkwardly twerking. Her comedy, written and directed by her for her to star in, shows no point of view. It’s just soulless noise and motion. It’s as if Girl Group were made by AI, and the prompt was “women aren’t funny.”
Girl Group is an ugly mess of a movie, but the music is good.
There’s an impressive array song numbers in Wilson’s comedy, including a heartfelt acoustic rendering of Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather,” a spirited cover of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please,” and a sanitized spin on Chappell Roan’s “Hot to Go!” As Tassie’s proteges — called Xplode (pronounced “explode”) — begin to compete against other girl groups, a bevy of talented performers get a chance to shine, including Chabely Ponce, Daniela Couso, Lilah Pate, Mia Kaplan, Bailey Stender, and Miracle Washington.
The performers in the girl groups (both Tassie’s proteges and a rival group) have screen presence and are fun to watch. Unfortunately, Wilson’s script offers so little attention to their characters, it’s impossible to become invested in their journey. And when Wilson leaps into the numbers, her performance style is so brash and superficial that she becomes a distraction in her own movie.
Beyond that, the musical numbers are horrendously captured. A dull color palette, flat and pink, coats the film in a fuzzy Instagram filter feel. The editing style is jumpy without any apparent logic in geography, emotional sensibility, or spectacle. Scrolling through TikTok has a more satisfying sense of flow.
Derry Girls’ Jamie-Lee O’Donnell is the real star of Girl Group.
The Northern Irish actor plays a rival girl group mentor and vengeance-seeking Girlfriends stan named Miss Candy. The moment O’Donnell struts onscreen, Girl Group finally ignites. She’s got a focus, a perspective, and a sharp comedic timing that even Wilson’s mismanagement of this movie can’t smother.
With an American accent and comical precision, O’Donnell seems to be channeling Dance Moms‘ Abby Lee Miller and Gina Gershon in Showgirls. Her intensity is outrageous, vicious, and wildly entertaining. Where Wilson’s approach to Girl Group seems to be chucking sexy dance moves and poop jokes at the screen to see what sticks, O’Donnell hits the bullseye with every line and reaction shot.
But maybe you should just take my word for that, and look for O’Donnell elsewhere, because watching Girl Group isn’t fun. It’s a punishment.
Girl Group was reviewed out of its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Mashable
