“The Wrong Girls” wants to be a sharp satire about women who are wronged, and it mostly misses the mark. The film follows a group of women whose lives are thrown off course by a single incident, and it spends most of its runtime trying to make that premise funny or provocative. It isn’t either, really, and the movie stumbles through its own setup without ever finding a rhythm worth sticking around for.
The setup is simple enough. A group of women, each with her own distinct personality and background, find themselves caught up in an event that changes their lives in ways they didn’t expect. The film leans on their reactions to build comedy, but the jokes land inconsistently, and the tone shifts from moment to moment without warning.
Trailer, via NEON.
A Cast That Never Clicks
The cast is a mix of familiar faces, and none of them quite land. Their performances are competent, but there’s no chemistry between them, no sense that these women share a lived history that would make their bond feel earned. The script asks them to bounce off each other, and the result is a series of one-note scenes rather than a group dynamic that feels alive.
The film tries to juggle multiple perspectives across the group, but it doesn’t give any one character enough room to breathe. The result is a cluttered narrative that never settles into a clear emotional center.
The Wrong Tone
The film is trying to be a satire, but satire requires precision. It needs to aim at a target and hit it, and this movie aims at the idea of women being wronged and misses almost entirely. The jokes fall flat, and the ones that land are small, isolated moments rather than a sustained argument.
The tone is also inconsistent. One scene might play as darkly comic, and the next will veer into something far more serious, sometimes within the same conversation. This lack of consistency undermines any attempt at a cohesive statement.
“The film is trying to be a satire, but satire requires precision.”
A Premise Too Big for Its Runtime
The premise is ambitious. It wants to capture a moment in the lives of several women and show how it ripples outward. But the execution can’t keep up with the ambition. The film runs long, and it stretches out scenes that should have been cut, leaving the pacing uneven and the central incident feeling less significant than it should.
The film also struggles with scale. It wants to be about a group of women, but it can’t seem to decide whether it’s a story about one woman or a story about all of them. That indecision shows in the storytelling, which keeps bouncing between individual perspectives without settling anywhere.
Performances That Miss the Mark
None of the performances rise above the material they’re given. The lead actress delivers her lines competently, but she never finds the humanity in her character that would anchor the story. Supporting players fare no better, their energy directed outward rather than toward building a shared reality.
The film’s biggest problem is that it never commits to its characters. It introduces them, gives them a quirk, and then moves on, treating them as plot devices rather than people.
A Film That Doesn’t Land
“The Wrong Girls” is a film that announces itself loudly and then fails to deliver. The premise is promising, and the cast is capable, but the script never coheres into something greater than the sum of its parts. The film is too scattered to hold together, and the jokes it tries to make don’t stick.
The film’s failure is structural. It can’t decide what kind of story it wants to tell, and the result is a mess of tones, themes, and ideas that never gel.
Where It Goes Wrong
The film’s biggest misstep is its refusal to commit to a single mode of storytelling. It starts as a comedy, drifts into drama, and ends up somewhere in between, and that wavering never resolves. The audience is left unsure what to think, and that uncertainty is reflected in the final product.
The film also suffers from a lack of stakes. Because the central incident is never fully grounded, the consequences of it feel hollow. The women react, but their reactions aren’t tied to anything specific, and that lack of grounding weakens the whole enterprise.
The Verdict
“The Wrong Girls” is a film that sets out to say something about women being wronged and fails to say it with conviction. It has a premise that could have worked, and it has a cast that could have carried it. But the script is too loose, the tone is too scattered, and the execution is too halfhearted to pull the whole thing together.
The film is a missed opportunity. It had a kernel of something interesting, and it let that kernel get buried under a pile of unfunny jokes and poorly paced scenes.
“The Wrong Girls” is a flawed film with a good idea at its core, but the idea never gets the care it deserves. The film is too busy trying to be everything at once to become anything coherent. It’s a disappointment, and it earns a middling score.
5.9 out of 10.
