Kernel Rating (out of 5): 
MPAA Rating: R Length: 87 minutes
Age Appropriate for: 17+. Don’t be fooled by the youngness of the cast, which is full of actors who have previously worked in more teen-friendly fare, like the Tobey Maguire version of “Spider-Man” or the TV show “Parks and Recreation.” The film isn’t the dirtiest, raunchiest R-rated comedy around, but it involves a fair amount of cursing, drug use, and sexual talk to capture all that can go wrong with life in your mid-20s, as well as a sex scene and a few more set in a strip club. Best for older teens (perhaps those recently enrolled in college) struggling to understand the ever-persistent phenomena of “mean girls.”
A lot can go wrong between female friends and during the 10 years after high school, and the dramatic comedy ‘Bachelorette’ from director Leslye Headland (adapting her own play) tries to explore those issues. But ‘Bachelorette,’ which effectively questions female competition and self-hatred, wraps up too neatly, shortchanging its own story in the process.
By Roxana Hadadi
If you thought last summer’s “Bridesmaids” accurately captured the kind of competition that can occur between women, you’ll see similar things in “Bachelorette,” in which girls portrayed by Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, and Isla Fisher behave unbelievably badly. But where “Bridemaids” worked as a kind of character study for the struggling single woman in her mid-20s, “Bachelorette” wants us to assume too much, showing us all the awful self-hatred evident in these women without providing enough backstory to make it believable.
