Two best friends embark on a cross country trip back to their hometown to attempt to win a pageant that eluded them as children.
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Reviews
Best movie of this year hands down!
Crappy film
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
The acting in this movie is really good.
There are movies that I refuse to watch again after watching it, but this is one of the movies I can watch again.The plot is OK, acting is good, and funny moments are really funny. Two girls who became friends through their childhood pageant is just so adorable. This is a story of a true blue friendship.It is not a laugh out loud movie, but it is very humorous and I find myself shaking my head while smiling.If you are like me who just want to enjoy a movie then you should give this movie a chanceThe scenes are good and the ending is something I really enjoy, This is a movie that you I like from beginning to end.
"Ass Backwards" takes its title quite literally from the very beginning, matter-of-factly offering us the image of two women from behind, squatting side by side as they relieve themselves in broad daylight, their urine trickling in parallel streams down the sidewalk. Thankfully, the comedy goes uphill from there—somewhat. Co-stars, co-writers and longtime collaborators June Diane Raphael and Casey Wilson have chemistry and energy to spare as a pair of bubble-headed best friends stumbling from one scenario to the next. The Upright Citizens Brigade alumnae and college best friends don't have to work to hard to convince us of their connection. It's infectious, and the daffy, breezy way they play off each other makes "Ass Backwards" way more enjoyable than it ought to be. Their delightful zaniness remains a constant even when the predicaments their characters find themselves in can be rather hit and miss and often strain for laughs in director Chris Nelson's feature debut. Raphael and Wilson star respectively as Kate and Chloe, aimless but unflappably upbeat women sharing an apartment in New York City. Pushing 30, they still have no real goals, although they've fashioned pseudo careers for themselves. Kate is an "entrepreneur" (she sells her eggs on Craigslist to couples trying to conceive) while Chloe is an "entertainer" (she's a listless go-go dancer in a box at a nightclub). They live on maxed-out credit to create the illusion of luxury, hoping to convince both the outside world and themselves that they've really made it. But when Kate and Chloe receive an invitation to return to their hometown to compete in an anniversary edition of the beauty pageant they both lost as young girls—the crucial moment in their childhood that bound and defined them—they can only pretend to be cool about it. The prospect of redeeming themselves is too tantalizing, especially in front of their longtime nemesis, a pageant goddess turned best-selling author (a smarmily condescending Alicia Silverstone). And the timing is perfect—sort of—because they've just been evicted from their apartment, forcing them to go somewhere. Now. So they load up a rickety van with totally impractical belongings, program the wrong directions into the GPS and hit the road. Their scattered adventures along the way feature a highly symbolic bunny rabbit, a strip contest (where Raphael's real-life husband, Paul Scheer, plays the club manager), a down-and-dirty interlude with a drug-addicted reality TV star (Brian Geraghty) and an overnight visit to a women's commune which (sort of) alters their notions of femininity. As with any kind of episodic or sketch comedy, some gags land more effectively than others, although you'll likely find a line or a beat or an image that makes you laugh from start to finish. Through it all, the actresses seem game for anything, staying completely committed to the delusional characters they've created and reveling not only in their flamboyance but also in their vulnerability. They allow us to genuinely enjoy these women (although spending 85 minutes with them is plenty) while also recognizing their flaws. Raphael and Wilson (and Kate and Chloe) owe a great debt to "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion," the still-hilarious 1997 comedy that was both silly and sweet and allowed clueless female characters to be ditzy and shallow while remaining true to each other. Despite Raphael and Wilson's fondness for pushing the humor into brash, crass directions (as evidenced by that opening shot), their characters clearly have an innate decency and a loyalty to each other that's heartening. At the same time, "Ass Backwards" is a welcome departure from the script they co-wrote for 2009's "Bride Wars," an ugly example of longtime female friends tearing each other apart for the sake of broad laughs. Even when the cracks in Kate and Chloe's cheery, colorful exterior begin to show, it's clear that they still love each other, and they'll live to shop together another day. Raphael and Wilson's friendship—and their collaborative efforts—are just as promising.
You have to wonder how this film happened. I'm sure I've seen a few that were worse, but none come to mind. Save yourself the time and watch paint dry. It will be a lot funnier, and you won't find yourself at the end saying, "What in the world was the person who made this paint thinking?" Really, really lame film.So in posting this review, it looks like I need to go on for ten lines to get it posted. If I were to list things I hated about this film, I could go on for volumes. But if I focused on what I liked, I'd be limited to a big round of applause for whoever did the trailer, which put the best possible face on a really dismal film.
As other users have said, there's an obvious Romy & Michelle vibe (nothing wrong with that) - but where that film had heart, likable characters, and actual jokes, this one has absolutely none of that. The two main characters are abrasive, unlikable and interchangeable - their motivations and intelligence level seem to change from scene to scene. This is an almost Andy Kaufman-esque piece of anti-comedy - scenes drag on and on with awkward silences and nothing resembling jokes or even attempted jokes. I might have laughed once - it's an absolute chore to sit through.I like Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael in other projects, but after this and Bride Wars, they need to take a break from screen writing. This makes Orci-Kurtzman scripts look like Charlie Kaufman or Tarantino.The only way this can be redeemed is if Raphael does an episode of "How Did This Get Made?" (the bad-movie discussion podcast she co-hosts) devoted to this movie. She's usually the most likable, level-headed person on the show, who seems to actually want to discuss the shortcomings of the movie instead of just crack easy jokes; any insight into how this movie went so, so wrong would be fascinating to listen to.