BAD GIRLS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
BAD GIRLS (or, "Girls Just Want to Have Guns") Starring: Madeleine Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson, Andie MacDowell, Drew Barrymore, James Russo, Dermot Mulroney. Screenplay: Ken Friedman and Yolande Finch. Director: Jonathan Kaplan.
I'd be willing to bet that someone sold the concept for BAD GIRLS with a one-line pitch like, "THE WILD BUNCH in bloomers." Such is the way in Hollywood these days. After all, Westerns have been hot at the box office, and making the protagonists women guarantees a smidgen of politically correct credibility (in addition to cleavage). Besides, with the paucity of good roles for women, talented actresses like Madeleine Stowe and Mary Stuart Masterson will jump at that chance to shoot guns. The problem is that these prefabricated films almost never bring along a script. BAD GIRLS is always either hopelessly cliche or insufferably stupid--and usually both.
BAD GIRLS is the story of four prostitutes in Echo City, Colorado, who wind up on the run together when one of them, Cody Zamora (Stowe) kills an unruly customer. She is saved from the hangman's noose by Anita (Masterson), Eileen (Andie MacDowell) and Lily (Drew Barrymore), and they head out together with detectives hot on their trail. Their plan is to make their way to Oregon, where Anita and her late husband had a timber claim, and to finance a lumber operation with Cody's ample savings. These plans are interrupted when those savings are stolen by Kid Jarrett (James Russo), a notorious bandit who has a history with Cody. The women and the gang of thieves repeatedly cross paths until it becomes clear that this movie ain't big enough for the both of 'em.
BAD GIRLS is frequently so incoherent that I was forced to wonder whether director had chopped all the raw footage into two minute chunks, strewn them about on the editing room floor and pieced the film together in whatever order he happened to pick them up. I knew I was in trouble from the outset, when the rescue of Cody takes place. Screenwriters Ken Friedman and Yolande Finch couldn't be bothered with such niceties as explaining why Eileen and Lily might want to save Cody (at least Anita was the one Cody saved). There is not a second spent letting these characters interact first, so that there seems to be some kind of connection between them. Apparently it's enough that they're sisters in the world's oldest profession. Then we are introduced to Josh (Dermot Mulroney), a taciturn cowboy who's out to avenge ... wild guess, anyone? ... the death of his Pa. The thing is that this subplot is not only cliche, it's put together in the least economical way possible, with the inclusion of Kid Jarrett's aging father (Robert Loggia). This additional character just muddles the movie further; in fact, I would go so far as to say that the inclusion of the entire Josh subplot is unnecessary. But that would have left Cody without a love interest, and we couldn't have that, now could we?
Oh, but there's more, pardners. In the last two minutes, there is the suggestion that Lily harbors a more intimate affection for Eileen, something we are completely unaware of until the music swells to a tear-jerking crescendo which means nothing because we have been given no background. James LeGros makes an appearance as a simple homesteader who wins Eileen's heart, but his is the only performance that isn't completely perfunctory. Madeleine Stowe and Mary Stuart Masterson are two of my favorite current young actresses, and both are forced to spout dialogue which puts the "hack" back in hackneyed. Director Jonathan Kaplan apparently had no idea what to do with a Western, so rather than set up his own shots he tries to do his half-hearted homage to Sam Peckinpah, with disastrous results. Whole set pieces are ripped off from THE WILD BUNCH, and Kaplan's use of slow motion becomes absurdly comic. The cinematography is quite good, but a big pile of garbage is a big pile of garbage no matter what kind of filter you put over the lens.
Sometimes you can look at a film as bad as BAD GIRLS and see the germ of an interesting idea that was undeveloped or simply butchered, but not here. There isn't the faintest attempt to make BAD GIRLS a real examination of the plight of women in the American West; the women are just a gimmick, unlike in THE BALLAD OF LITTLE JO. BAD GIRLS is lazy, stupid, sloppy and, worst of all, boring.
They are women, hear me snore.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 cowgrrrls: 1.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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