Everyone knows a Bridezilla. Someone pathetically obsessed with her own wedding, forcing everyone in earshot to listen to her ramble endlessly about her special day as she strives to ensure that all attention is paid only to her. Bride Wars is a celebration of this subculture. Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) have been the very best of friends since they were kids, but when their weddings are accidentally booked on the same day and at the same place, folly ensues. What life lessons are we left to take away from this hate-fest?

1. Marriage is Not Important; Weddings Are.

Getting married is a big deal, and everyone knows that if you don't have a wedding that outshines all of your friends' weddings, then you can never be happy. This wedding should probably be stressed over, cost a lot of money and of course ruin every important relationship you have. Also, since neither woman seems capable of sacrificing or giving the least bit of grace to the other, they'll both probably have long and happy marriages, since sacrifice and forgiveness and unconditional love are not a part of the actual marriage.

2. Women are Crazy!

This mess of a film was inexcusably written by four women (with a guy who must hate women), and in the end, all you can feel is shame. Since the majority of the film is spent watching a friendship melt down over the stupidest reasons, you get to observe the continued propagation of lies about women and, oh, you know, the way they are. These women are obsessive, cruel, inane and so base that you can't even care if either of them arrives at a happy ending. The craziness and childish behavior isn't even gently mocked, just presented as fact, until the final, patently false dry-heave of an ending.

3. Being Obsessed with Material Stuff is Awesome

Such slavish devotion to excessively expensive weddings seems totally out of touch with the reality of these hard financial times. Both Emma and Liv are frightening in their relentless pursuit of the "perfect" wedding that must occur at the Plaza hotel in New York in the month of June. I guess it makes sense since they have nothing else in their lives. Oh wait, Emma is a schoolteacher and Liv is a successful lawyer, both living fairly easy lives in their nice apartments in New York, with men who love them and families that support them. So it's easy to see why a big fancy over-the-top wedding, replete with the perfect dress, flowers, and shoes, will complete them as people!

4. Men are Sweet and Dopey and Replaceable

The men in this film are left to do nothing greater than trailing these women around, bridging the gap between scenes or offering up inanely simple dialogue meant to help wrench the audience along from Point A to Point B. These two have been planning their weddings since a tender young age; all they've really been waiting for is the groom to show up so the fairytale day can occur. One telling exchange finds Liv screaming about "her wedding" as her weirdly passive fiancé tentatively offers up that it is "our wedding." But even he seems confused on that point. Sadly, men are reduced to lame stereotypes and characteristics in the same offensive way that women have been for years. This man is nice, this man is mean and this man is gay!

5. "Best Friends" Really Means Nothing

These women have been the very closest of friends since childhood -- and yet that means almost nothing when faced with the chance to have the perfect wedding. Years of devotion and love all fly out the window because neither of these selfish women will concede. It is ridiculous that such a simple problem could cause so deep a divide, and it speaks to the selfish and ego-maniacal whirlwind that the wedding day has come to be. Emma sums up the film and the entire wedding industry when she says, "... it's just about me."

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