The lifelong friendship between Liv (Kate Hudson, left) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) is tested when their weddings are accidently booked for the same day at the same prized location in the comedy Bride Wars. (Twentieth Century Fox)

Dear friends, we are gathered here today to bid farewell to the wedding movie. What’s that, you say? You have seen the wedding movie just this week, walking amongst us? You have heard it tell its woeful tale of female self-loathing and girl-on-girl hatred in promotional appearances by two such nubile and not-untalented and very giggly young actresses as Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway? Oh, dear people. Your faith is adorable.

The wedding film has inched along a crevice of unflattering female hysteria in which once-functional women scorch the earth in pursuit of THEIR PERFECT DAY.

I grant you that the opening of Bride Wars may make it seem as though the wedding movie is alive and cat-fighting, but let me ask you this: What is it to be alive? Just because a cinematic genre continues to prove bankable, to prey upon the best instincts of an openhearted and willing audience innocently seeking a diverting romance in the depths of an unholy winter, is it really living? If a thing is so devoid of character and humour, so without the animating forces of love and sweetness, so crippled by base materialism — then certainly that thing is dead. Or at least a plague upon the multiplex.

Let’s look back and remember better times. We have all given over to the charms of the wedding movie. We are all weak enough and human enough to occasionally indulge the grown-up princess fantasy that is the ultimate lifestyle porn of the romantic comedy universe. But after a while, an itchy predictability overtook the wedding movie. Sameness set in, gout-like and stinky. We have come to await the main character’s transition from competent, professional woman to lunatic bride (My Best Friend’s Wedding; 27 Dresses). We await the dress montage; the squealing, handholding bridesmaid jump-around; the bouquet toss to the ravenous wolf pack of single gals. (Hey, Portly, don’t bother!) We await the gay-ish friend or relative poised at the ready to break out the sass. We await — oh yes — the Motown.

It’s true, my protesting flock, that from time to time a smart filmmaker will take this shared cultural experience and mine it for comedy (Muriel’s Wedding; Wedding Crashers) or pathos (Rachel Getting Married). But mostly, not so much. Mostly, the wedding film has inched along a crevice of unflattering female hysteria in which once-functional women scorch the earth in pursuit of THEIR PERFECT DAY. We knew, as these screenwriting violations occurred in film after film, that they were destroying the integrity of the wedding movie, sucking the joy out of it. We saw its heart weakening. And so did ours. And now, with Bride Wars, a flatline. Over and out.

Let me break it down for you, people. Bride Wars is about two best friends, Liv (Hudson) and Emma (Hathaway), who share a lifelong dream of getting married at Manhattan’s schmancy Plaza Hotel in June. Let’s measure dreams, shall we? Martin Luther King: big, worthy dream. Plaza wedding: sad, little dream. Alas, when both gal pals are engaged, one to a bland brunette (Bryan Greenberg) and the other to a bland light-brunette (Chris Pratt), the fairy godmother wedding planner (Candice Bergen) makes a fatal error and books the two Plaza weddings on the same day.

Emma shares in the joy of Liv's marriage to the bland Daniel (Steve Howey). (Twentieth Century Fox)

Friendship is not thicker than fevered bridal blood, and soon, the new enemies are playing Punk’d with each other, employing all the inventiveness of a pair of C-average fifth graders. One couriers cookie bouquets to the other so her Vera Wang dress will bust. One messes with the tint on a self-tanner so the other turns into a pumpkin. One sabotages hair dye so the other ends up with blue highlights. And so forth, and so forth, into eternity.

But those childish shenanigans prove relatively benign compared to what happens next: we will all remember forever, and with a chill, the moment when Anne Hathaway unleashes her inner stripper and takes to the swinging rope to kick ass in the Sexiest Bride Dance-Off at a Chippendale’s-like lady bar. Oh Lord, make the pain stop! Make it stop!

The call goes unheeded. Things get worse. Liv, a successful lawyer, shows up at an important meeting blue-haired and wearing a bra and blazer. Then she suffers a full-on bridal meltdown in a room of middle-aged male corporate clients and is swiftly demoted.

We can’t always understand why these things happen. All I can say is: it is a kind of insidious evil writ cute, and it’s OK to be angry. It’s OK to be infuriated by the revival of the archaic idea that women’s feral drive to couple up will eventually eclipse rational behaviour, professionalism, friendship.

That said, I’ll admit that Kate Hudson has been blessed with some comedic chops, and her gravelly new voice and scheming eyes hint, from time to time, at edginess, a fighting spirit that wants to resuscitate this filmic corpse. It is not to be. Alas, she is handcuffed to Hathaway’s profoundly uninteresting “nice girl” performance. They go down together.

Let’s pray for Anne Hathaway, shall we? I remember her starring but a few months ago in Rachel Getting Married, a film that strove to show the wedding as a site of meaning and human connection, a place where intimacy between women was respected, not ridiculed. Perhaps if Bride Wars had caught a case of parody — like the one that so charmingly infected Muriel’s Wedding — then maybe, maybe it would have survived. But no — the wedding movie’s destiny was sealed from the first time two grown women honked like baby seals and jumped up and down clutching their bridal magazines. The good Lord knows: No. One. Does. This.

Lack of imagination is like lack of oxygen; there can be no survivors. The wedding movie is out of its misery now, and perhaps, as the final credits rolled, I thought: So are we all.

Bride Wars opens Jan. 9.

Katrina Onstad is the film columnist for CBCNews.ca.