In an era when studios are focused on sure things and IP, true boondoggles are increasingly rare. What separates a boondoggle from a mere flop, you ask? Boondoggles swing for the fences but don't make contact. Boondoggles make you wonder how so many talented people came together to make something so bafflingly terrible.
The problems with The Bride! start immediately. See, Jessie Buckley plays Ida, a gangster's talkative girlfriend. But also plays the undead titular antiheroine. And for some reason Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. Introduced to us from Limbo, she's ready to pitch a sequel to her most famous work. And she chooses to tell it by... possessing Ida before she's killed. Buckley, already laying on the Chicago accent thick, now gets to crank her performance up to 11, going even broader once Ida's brought back to life.
Her partner in crime is Frank (Christian Bale). The original creature, he's tired of the lonely existence he's lived for decades. So he's sought out a mad scientist (Annette Bening) to make him a wife. Newly alive, the Bride is almost cat-like, petulant and self-centered. She's reluctant to live the vagabond life, but eventually finds liberation in seeking revenge on the same lecherous dudes who made her life a living hell.
The Bride's cross-country kills inspire a wave of similar vigilante justice from sex workers, secretaries, and other oppressed women. But aside from a brief montage and a throwaway line of dialogue, this never really develops. This aspect especially makes the film often feel like a feminist retelling of Joker. But like that mega-hit, it goes more for empty provocation than meaningful allegory.
And if you thought that was the only subplot, you'd be wrong! There are also a pair of detectives hot on the trail of Frank and the Bride. Peter Sarsgaard plays the seasoned cop, with Penélope Cruz as the more observant investigator. But their presence adds almost nothing to the film, except for Maggie Gyllenhaal to emphasize yet again how much women were ignored, harassed, and underestimated then and now.
So does anything work here? Well, the costumes from Oscar-winner Sandy Powell are extraordinary, as is the makeup and hairstyling. And Gyllenhaal gets to both flatter and torture her brother Jake, casting him as a slimy matinee idol admired by Frank. There are also a few entertaining song-and-dance numbers. But the film never tilts into being a full-on musical.
It's perhaps not surprising that a movie about pieced-together corpses feels like so many other stories but never forms into something new. The Bride! has ambition and style to spare. What it doesn't have is direction or coherence.
