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Debut writer-director Dylan Meyer practically achieves liftoff with her absurdist stoner comedy “The Wrong Girls,” starring Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat. If Method Man and Red Man once posited “How High” with their
2001 comedy, Meyer counters with a pair of pals who achieve psychic powers through experimental psychedelics. And while Dave Chappelle was “Half Baked” in 1998, put a fork in Frankie (Stewart) and Molly (Shawkat), because they’re fully done. The burnout duo, who live in an LA apartment dubbed Casa de Chill Zone, put Cheech and Chong to shame with their reefer madness.
Meyer blends together almost a few too many familiar strains for the plot of “The Wrong Girls,” which takes a minute to gain coherence before almost immediately losing it again. In this crazy California yarn, Frankie and Molly have to come up with rent money by the next day, as in F. Gary Gray’s 1995 LA stoner classic “Friday” (as well as last year’s “One of Them Days”), a quest that sends them on an odyssey fit for “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” Meanwhile, a mistaken identity twist has a mercenary nicknamed Not Metal Head Dave (LaKeith Stanfield) and a team of Danish scientists and security contractors hot on their heels. Squid brains, talking cats and telepathy, oh my!
It may be loosey-goosey, but Meyer’s film is far from a bad trip. The ensemble cast is especially charming, and the good humor oozing out of the entire project means it’s hard to avoid a contact high. Stewart and Shawkat have a fun and amiable vibe together, even if their characters aren’t immediately in focus. Frankie is a Stanford engineering student who failed out of college and now works as a “Kwik Things” delivery driver. Codependent bestie Molly is a weed-inspired aspiring chef whose utterly reasonable boyfriend Josh (Zack Fox) would really love for her to get her life together and move in with him.
Frankie, on the other hand, discovers that her latest beau Mike Z. (Morgan Krantz) has replaced her with a straitlaced doppelgänger upgrade, Frances (Stewart in glasses). At a Mannequin Pussy show, she confronts the pair, then runs into the aforementioned Not Metal Head Dave, who passes her a secretive briefcase, thinking that Frankie is high-level researcher Frances.
Which is how Frankie and Molly find themselves in possession of some seriously heady psychedelics derived from deep sea squid testes. They make themselves unwitting test subjects for the stuff before trying to sell the drugs at a Stanford alumni event hosted by Martin (Tony Hale), and suddenly find themselves highly valuable assets for the drug researchers, including Dr. Olsen (Kate McKinnon), when it’s discovered they’ve gained telepathic powers during their trip.
McKinnon is a comedic MVP as always, and Stanfield proves himself again to be a Swiss Army knife as a performer, ably fitting into any genre, role or ensemble cast, and demonstrating both comic chemistry with McKinnon and sexual chemistry with Stewart (one-sided on her part). Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani voice Frankie and Molly’s cats to great effect. A Geena Davis cameo reminds us of another great film about female friendship, “Thelma & Louise,” though this one has a happier ending.
Cinematographer Todd Banhazl achieves the ‘90s retro druggie look with a brightly saturated palette, hazy filtered light, Dutch angles and wide lenses, while rocker-turned-composer Ty Segall lays down some nasty psych-surf rock guitar licks on the score — though some of the twangy flourishes get a touch repetitive.
“The Wrong Girls” feels heavy on inside humor, much of it LA-centric — jokes about freeways, anyone? But Meyer is generous enough to want to bring the audience in on it, and she does make tangible her references. Those not in SoCal might not quite get the depths of the bit about Frankie and Molly mourning a restaurant called “Souper Starz Buffet” (R.I.P. Souplantation), but Meyer makes their tearful goodbye, and final feast, palpably emotional and fun to watch.
It all feels like a cult hit in a good way: the kind of movie you’d watch over and over on Comedy Central or on DVD because it’s just so silly, a little rough around the edges, but highly specific. It seems like that’s exactly what Meyer was going for too, so if that’s your thing, light it up and pass that Dutch.
