RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Opening with the camera swallowed by the waves of the Pacific Ocean, " The Wrong Girls " immediately establishes itself as a film that needs to be tactile. Soon, we're beneath the surface, watching a bioluminescent squid spray its ink as the title blossoms across the screen — the words themselves suggesting an intrinsic understanding of stoner culture . Very Deadhead. Very good start.
From there, we're transported to Casa de Chill Zone, the Los Angeles home shared by best friends Frankie ( Kristen Stewart ) and Molly ( Alia Shawkat ). Starry-eyed, sharp-tongued, and mostly warmhearted, the roomies are watching a nature documentary, discussing how they supposedly "solved climate change" the previous night, and lamenting their desperate need for rent money. Related Stories 'The End of Oak Street' Review: David Robert Mitchell Delivers the Biggest Surprise of the Summer with the Best Dinosaur Movie Since 1993 'Coyote vs. Acme' Review: Thank Goodness This Clever Comedy About the Evils of Corporate Greed Was Rescued from Corporate Hell
Recognizable? Absolutely. But "The Wrong Girls" doesn't fully lock in until Frankie gets her ass to work.
Leaving Molly at home to experiment with blue cheese and THC as brownie ingredients, the Kwik Thingz delivery girl heads out in uniform. She startles herself by activating a talking lawn ornament (again, relatable!), then arrives with a "cheese sculpture" at the home of some rich yuppie (Tony Hale). He's mostly ignoring her, but breaks his train of thought long enough to ask one magnificent question.
"Are you literally smoking a lit joint right now?"
"My bad," Frankie says, flicking the evidence out of her mouth and onto his driveway.
It's the beginning of a movie that reinvigorates the stoner comedy in countless ways. So clever you want to grab Meyer by the shoulders and stare deep into her eyes until she really gets the compliment, "The Wrong Girls" bottles a new era for 420-friendly filmmaking by locating the sweet spot where being a pothead is still somewhat taboo — even in California.
Legalization has flattened the narrative stakes that used to make weed movies work. Getting high no longer automatically puts a character at odds with the cops, their parents, or another authority figure, so marijuana has lost some of the low-level transgression that sustained classics from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" to "Pineapple Express."
But Frankie isn't funny because she's afraid of being arrested. She's funny because being brazenly checked-out from modern society, even while functioning within it, still feels socially incorrect. "The Wrong Girls" understands that weed is mainstream in 2026, but being visibly and unapologetically high is still seen by plenty of people as a kind of offense.
Is living your life from behind a curtain of smoke, particularly in a modern world this dire, really a bad thing?
Testing that theory, Molly and Frankie start the film at a crossroads. Ask Molly's boyfriend Josh (Zack Fox) and he'll tell you the girls' shared comfort may be holding one or both women back. Frankie dropped out of an engineering program at Stanford years before, and Molly could be a professional baker if her talents weren't always diverted toward party antics. Their friendship is an obvious life raft. But from the outside, it can also resemble an anchor.
Frankie confronts that insecurity when she goes alone to see an ex-boyfriend at a concert and finds him with a successful scientist who, minus the Lisa Loeb glasses, looks eerily like her. Following an altercation, Frankie is left half-drunk and wearing her rival's broken frames when a mysterious man we'll come to know as Not Metal Head Dave (a pitch-perfect LaKeith Stanfield) makes a terrible mistake. Yep, that's how Frankie winds up with a briefcase containing "the most important scientific breakthrough of our time."
The glowing substance inside, we eventually learn, was derived from the wordless coexistence of deep-sea creatures and designed to address humanity's urgent need for empathy. But stuck in a money jam, Frankie and Molly immediately decide to sell it like any other recreational drug. Of course, not before taking two vials themselves — y'know, just to make sure they're safe.
The psychedelic sequence that follows, punctuated by three European henchmen tailing the girls in a black SUV, is funny enough. But it's not until the next morning, when Frankie and Molly feel the brain they already tend to share working on an actual telepathic level, that "The Wrong Girls" kicks into high gear.
Zoning out while the world feels like it's on fire can be a kind of superpower, and Meyer uses supernatural abilities amplified by THC to explore how the stoner lifestyle can both mess up your day and save you from yourself. Think "Superbad" meets "Smiley Face," with a nautical "Spider-Man" twist.
Stewart, having the absolute time of her life, allows the cool persona she's cultivated across the modern indie scene to give way to an insecure brattiness that's wonderfully refreshing. Adding syllables to words she's annoyed to say (you'd be shocked how much disdain she can fit inside the name "Josh"), Stewart makes Frankie sound fundamentally different from any character she has played before — save for maybe a few bits on "SNL." She's highly capable but beaten down by a world that has made her feel like she isn't enough, and just smart enough to almost think her way out of that trap.
But Frankie needs Molly and the sunny homemaker energy she brings to everyday life. Recalling her turn as a Texas waitress and another great best friend in Drew Barrymore's "Whip It," Shawkat plays Molly like your sweetest childhood friend crossed with a blissed-out Keebler Elf. When Frankie gets down on herself, Molly rattles off obstacles they've already escaped together. Whether inventing the Bong-a-Tron or freeing themselves after hours trapped inside a Party City parking lot, these misadventures almost always hinge on weed....
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