The Wrong Girls review – Kristen Stewart fumbles through forgettable stoner comedy

Want to feel old? Superbad turns 20 next year. It’s been decades since the stoner comedy ruled the box office. In fact, the genre’s best theatrically released film of recent years – the hilarious buddy movie One of Them Days – didn’t feature any weed smoking at all despite hitting all the usual outlandish beats of a stoner flick. If the streaming success of Hulu’s recent R-rated bong-ripper Pizza Movie is anything to go by, audiences would rather watch this particular strain of movie on the couch where they can spark up in peace. Related: The End of Oak Street review – suburban dino-survival romp is more turkey than T-rex The Wrong Girls aims to reverse that trend with a nationwide US theatrical rollout by Neon, the arty distributor which propelled Parasite and Anora to Oscar glory. Best friends Molly (Alia Shawkat) and Frankie (Kristen Stewart) live in a PeeWee’s Playhouse-coded stoner cave with macrame decor, a life-size cutout of Céline Dion, multiple cat towers and a contraption called the bong-o-tron – a complex rig of tubes and bubbling conical flasks – that fills the entirety of their coffee table. Being high all the time gives them a daffy kind of magical thinking, as they drive around town belting out power ballads and imagine that they are under the ocean with all manner of friendly sea creatures. After being mistaken for her lookalike at a punk show, Frankie is entrusted with a briefcase full of experimental drugs which give the pair Matilda-like telekinetic powers, the ability to talk to their pet cats (voiced by Seth Rogan and Kumail Nanjiani), and sets off a chain of chaotic, intermittently funny events as the pair are pursued across Los Angeles by baddies who want their property back. It’s clear that first-time director Dylan Meyer (also Stewart’s wife) has studied the stoner comedy. The Wrong Girls has all the touchstones of the genre, with slacker roommates at its center (Half Baked), rent that is due (Friday) and a novelty bong set…