Bride Wars
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The Story
Best friends Liv (Kate Hudson) and Liv (Anne Hathaway) have dreamed very specifically of their perfect NYC wedding day (June at the Plaza) since they were little girls. Now all grown up and simultaneously engaged, a scheduling mix up leaves that both booked into the same date and time.
Neither tough-as-nails Liv or usually supportive Emma is willing to move her wedding. Instead the gloves come off as both find ways to creatively sabotage each other’s special day. Can they resolve the feud before the wedding bells ring?
Content Issues
Some swearing is heard, including several uses of God’s name. Lots of alcohol is consumed. Lots of cleavage is bared. A bachelorette party features male strippers, with Emma and Liv joining in a sexy dancing contest. And both ladies live (and sleep with) their guys well before considering marriage.
Worldview Talking Points
“Bride Wars” wants to be a wacky screwball comedy about the lengths to which wedding-crazed best friends will go to hurt each other, but it shines a light on modern ideas about marriage in the process.
Emma and Liv have placed a far higher priority on the wedding day than on the idea of marriage itself. After years of living with their perspective guys, they joke about being behind schedule on their first divorce. It’s clear that for them, marriage is an eventual formalization of relationship between two people who have proved their commitment by living together.
By the end, one bride gets around to asking herself whether she actually wants to be married to the guy she’s been with for a decade.
In the Worldview analysis on PlanetWisdom.com, we looked the ultimate wedding day between Christ and the church — and what that has to do with marriage here on Earth now.
It might not be a great movie, but “Bride Wars” might provoke a lot of great conversation with your student about sex, commitment, living together, weddings, and marriage. A few of these questions might help get the ball rolling.
- Have you ever imagined what your wedding day might be like? Which parts of the day or the decorations or the service are really important to you, in any?
- Can you understand why some people would rather live together for a while before they think about getting married? Would there be any advantages to that?
- Do you think people who live together have happier or less happy relationships that people who are married? If they get married eventually, do you think people who live together first are more or less likely to get divorced? (See this link for the results of one study of divorce rates and this one for research on other fallout from cohabitation.)
- Why do you think God’s Word makes such a big deal about people being married before they have sex with each other? (See Genesis 2:24, Hebrews 13:4, Revelation 19.)
- Do you think God dislikes the idea of people having sex? Does He think sex is evil? Or is it meant to be a great thing for marriage people that can cause serious problems for unmarried people?
- In what ways are human marriages supposed to be like the relationship between Jesus and the church?
- Do you think good friends would really be as mean to each other as Liv and Emma are? Why do you think one or the other of them didn’t give in?
- Why doesn’t everyone get divorced? What makes marriage relationships really work?
- Are you hoping to get married? If so, how soon would you like to be married? Do you think its better to get married really young or to wait until your done with any schooling and have a career established?
