The Scoop features personal essays on movie-related topics.
The year is 2015. It’s Friday movie night with my bestie, and we’re craving—as we usually did—the perfect watch to team up with our large pepperoni pizza and messy understanding of adolescence. Ideally, this film included some dramatized version of high school secretly played out by a group of twenty-year-old actors, complete with dire circumstances attached to a protagonist with terrible decision-making skills. A certain kind of lovable idiot that could really only be found within the era of stoner movies like Superbad, Pineapple Express, and This is the End. Which is inevitably what we went with.
And while I stan Superbad as one of the best stoner movies of all time, it’s hard not to address the 800-pound bong in this genre: these movies were also total sausage fests. You know it, your girlfriend knows it, and the self-fulfilling studio suits making these kinds of movies probably know it too.
I might not have fully realized it as a teen, but years later I sensed I had quietly absorbed the subconscious message that this genre could only thrive with a dick and a superiority complex. That boys could always be reckless, stupid, horny, and still walk away as hilarious heroes by the end, while women-led movies with those same McLovable idiot plotlines and chaotic morals weren’t something I could find on the watchlist—because they rarely existed, thanks to a patriarchal cruise control that has been passively driving the genre for decades. All that to say: it’s been a while, arguably since Gregg Araki’s 2007 film Smiley Face, since we’ve had a decent female-led stoner comedy to add to the rap sheet of imprudent characters.
But now, the year is 2026, and morally messy women on screen are something I have a deeply suppressed craving for. Which is why I’m thrilled by the new stoner buddy comedy The Wrong Girls, the directorial debut of screenwriter Dylan Meyer (Moxie, XOXO) that is reopening the stoner movie portal and passing the genre joint to the girls. More specifically, to the kind of girl who is always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and loves to get high while doing stupid shit with her friends.
A rip-roaring trip with a retro heartbeat
Loosely based on Meyer’s own personal relationship with best friend and producer of the film, Maggie McLean, The Wrong Girls has been fourteen years of good vibes in the making. The story follows two codependent besties, Molly (Alia Shawkat) and Frankie (Kristin Stewart), who are living paycheck to paycheck, bong rip to bong rip, in modern-day Los Angeles. Strapped for cash, one of them stumbles upon a secret briefcase that might just be the answer to their problems—or maybe another problem that plunges them deeper into chaos.
In pure stoner-comedy fashion, The Wrong Girls plays like a psychedelic trip that somehow slipped straight through the cracks of the late-2000s stoner movie era and into ours. Seriously, if this movie walked into a bar and said it was the ghost of stoner-movie past, I would believe it. And probably ask why the hell it took so long to get here when I needed this kind of movie ten years ago.
The movie’s retro heartbeat is definitely something I would have welcomed into my Friday-night movie rotation. Not just because the movie also features familiar favorites like Seth Rogen and Kate McKinnon, but because it’s the much-needed femme-centric stoner comedy that invites women to be just as high, hilarious, and horrible in dumb situations. Seeing Molly and Frankie waltz into a party wearing a two-piece set made entirely of garbage bags makes me think these two probably would have happily merged into the 2007 era, and maybe even bought Seth and Evan a case of alcohol in Superbad if given the opportunity for a stoner movie crossover. (With interest, though—these girls gotta pay rent.)
But because these kinds of movies were rarely available, I do wonder what seeing these kinds of messy heroines in the same cinematic universe as the guys I grew up watching might have done for my understanding of what women were allowed to be on screen. Maybe I wouldn’t have thought twice about being the chaotic one (something my eldest sibling aura might twitch at). Or maybe I would have clocked a little earlier that women could be the idiots with their best friends and get away with it if they wanted to. Nevertheless, Meyer is still attempting to make up for lost time by adding her “wrong girl” duo to an otherwise macho movie catalog.
I wonder what seeing these kinds of messy heroines in the same cinematic universe as the guys I grew up watching might have done for my understanding of what women were allowed to be on screen.
Even though The Wrong Girls definitely has its flaws—like force-fed bits where they’re trying to pick the perfect song in the car while bad guys are chasing them—it’s fitting that the film feels just as hazy and disjointed as the women at the center of it. Because truthfully, these characters have no idea what’s happening or what they’re doing. They stumble through one increasingly ridiculous situation after the next, struggling to pick up the plot pieces as they go, and as a viewer you’re doing the same thing: trying to piece together what’s real, who the good guys are, and why their cats are telepathically talking to them. And then Celine Dion starts playing, and, well, you just start humming along with these idiots with no real understanding of why you’re here, but you’re having a good time because these girls are too.
The more The Wrong Girls settles into its own chaotic rhythm, the easier it is for those structural imperfections to blend in with the messy kaleidoscope that is Molly and Frankie’s stoner story. If The Wrong Girls is less interested in a perfectly constructed plot than it is in giving us a lens into female friendship and enough blue cheese brownies to keep the night going—plus a rad video-game style score from Ty Segall that made Molly and Frankie’s story feel like meeting the final boss—then Meyer has largely hit her mark here.
If the year was still 2015, The Wrong Girls would be the ideal cinematic snack to indulge in between those greasy pizza bites and laughs with your best friend. But even if the film is years late to the party, the nostalgia of my stoner movie era was still so much fun to hang out with. If you grew up as a girl who loved movies like Superbad and The Big Lebowski, this femme mess is something your hot-box cinema circle in high school would thoroughly enjoy.
