‘The Wrong Girls’ Review: Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat Are a Good Time in Dylan Meyer’s Shaggy Stoner Comedy
Dylan Meyer’s debut feature, ‘The Wrong Girls’, is reviewed as an uneven but enjoyable absurdist stoner comedy led by Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat. The film follows two cash-strapped friends on a chaotic Los Angeles quest, combining familiar genre elements with increasingly surreal events; its appeal lies chiefly in its good humour and charismatic ensemble.
Stewart plays Frankie, a former Stanford engineering student working as a delivery driver, while Shawkat’s Molly is an aspiring chef whose boyfriend wants her to become more settled. After Frankie is mistaken for her more conventional double, Frances, she and Molly acquire experimental psychedelics made from deep-sea squid testes, gain telepathic powers and become targets for researchers and a mercenary; LaKeith Stanfield, Kate McKinnon, Tony Hale and Zack Fox co-star.
- Stewart and Shawkat anchor a loose but amiable stoner comedy.
- A mistaken identity leads to telepathy and pursuit.
- The ensemble helps offset the film’s shaggy plotting.
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The film is a comedy about two friends in Los Angeles who are short of money and find themselves drawn into an increasingly strange adventure. It uses the conventions of stoner comedies, in which drug use and mishaps drive the plot, alongside more fantastical ideas.
Kristen Stewart plays Frankie, a delivery driver who once studied engineering at Stanford, and Alia Shawkat plays Molly, an aspiring chef facing pressure to make her life more stable. Other major roles are played by LaKeith Stanfield, Kate McKinnon, Tony Hale and Zack Fox.
The story centres on an identity mix-up and experimental drugs that give the pair unusual abilities, bringing them into conflict with people seeking to control or recover the drugs. Dylan Meyer is making her first feature film as a director with this project.