{"id":846443,"date":"2026-09-13T14:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T14:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/846443\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T14:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T14:32:10","slug":"girl-group-review-rebel-wilsons-bawdy-insubstantial-pop-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/846443\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Girl Group’ Review: Rebel Wilson’s Bawdy, Insubstantial Pop Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tToward the end of Rebel Wilson<\/a>\u2019s \u201cGirl Group<\/a>,\u201d a fizzy, gaudy clone of \u201cPitch Perfect\u201d sculpted from the mentor formula of \u201cBad News Bears,\u201d the movie spirals into an interminable sequence of pop music performances. The song-and-dance numbers are so awkwardly endless that they call to mind the denouement of a very different pop spectacle: Brady Corbet\u2019s \u201cVox Lux,\u201d in which Natalie Portman\u2019s megastar becomes a tragic emblem of the emptiness of the celebrity industrial complex.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGirl Group,\u201d which follows a band of misfits competing to become signed music artists, could not be further removed from that type of cynicism if it were set on a different planet, and Wilson, starring as the group\u2019s coach, seems hardly to know the meaning of the word. A comedy whiz who became famous for playing \u2014 as she wrote in her memoir \u2014 \u201cthe fat funny girl,\u201d Wilson has little on her mind here beyond sparkly merriment, and \u201cGirl Group\u201d is an accordingly flamboyant extravaganza designed to have audiences humming and nodding along without thinking a single thought.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are occasions that call for this sort of broadly comforting trifle, on airplanes or in late-night popcorn sessions. \u201cGirl Group\u201d seems even to nod to its position on the feel-good shelf when, after a trying day, a character suggests to her sister that they head home to snuggle and rent \u201cPitch Perfect.\u201d This movie \u2014 despite performances from a veritable diva corps d\u2019elite, including Nicole Scherzinger and Ashley Roberts of The Pussycat Dolls, the Spice Girls\u2019 Mel C, and All Saints\u2019 Shaznay Lewis \u2014 never reaches the emotional heights of that rewatch-ready franchise, nor does it really strive to. It\u2019s instead at ease as a second-stringer, a congenial romp that exists only as it unspools before you, then dissipates like stage fog the moment it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story opens in 1997, as five friends at a London girls\u2019 school prepare to perform in their auditorium. Backstage, a member of the crew frets to her teacher (a brief but keen Sally Hawkins) about the pressure, before the pals \u2014 who perform under the name Gurlfriends \u2014 head onstage and bring the house down. The overture gives way to a whirlwind montage of the group\u2019s ascent, culminating with a member named Tassie (played in the present day by Wilson) ditching the gang to try and make it as a solo act. The effort fails, and Tassie sinks into an alcoholic stupor from which she emerges, years later, to find that she\u2019s been replaced for the reunion tour by a warbling prima donna.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is where the real story starts, and where Wilson might have been better off centering the movie all along. Sentenced to community service at a youth center, Tassie meets a group of Gen Z-ers whom she\u2019s assigned to mentor ahead of an upcoming competition. The washed-up star sees their talent as a chance to rehabilitate her own image, but the peppy, ambitious teens have aspirations of their own, and as Tassie sets about molding them into a glossy vision of millennial pop stardom, her narcissism increasingly becomes a liability to their success.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are feeble gestures at a generational divide over female sexuality and pop-star image, as when one of the younger crew exclaims that Gurlfriends were \u201ctotally playing into the male gaze.\u201d But such moments are so few and far between that it feels as if Wilson forgot about the theme halfway through, or, more likely, found it too thorny to properly unpack. Fair enough: prickly questions about how famous women can or should display themselves are unlikely to be settled by a broad comedy more interested in cramming in mile-a-minute jokes.<\/p>\n

\n\tMuch of the film\u2019s humor consists of bawdy clowning, with a handful of contemporary reference-laden jokes thrown in for good measure. And despite Wilson\u2019s frank discussions of weight and weight loss in her memoir, there\u2019s a curious abundance of size-related gags. At one point, a child accuses Tassie of looking like she \u201cate\u201d Sabrina Carpenter. Elsewhere, Jennifer Coolidge, gamely playing Gurlfriends\u2019 manager, encourages Tassie to promote Splurt, a nutrition bar with a laxative effect. Its potential to induce sudden bowel urgency in front of a crowd does not go unnoticed.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmid the slew of tired gags, the harmony among the younger cast is the film\u2019s greatest asset, and their easy rapport and naturalism help cut against the run-of-the-mill story. The standouts are Chabely Ponce, as an acoustic guitar-slinging crooner, and Lilah Pate, who excels as the group\u2019s leader, despite having to suffer through one ill-conceived scene involving an aggressive, nonconsensual kiss.<\/p>\n

\n\tTheir enthusiasm as an ensemble suggests a warmer movie, one in which the nonconformists take center stage as they blossom into more confident versions of themselves. But lost in the surrounding muddle and often eclipsed by Wilson\u2019s relentless mugging, their stories wind up playing second fiddle. Their vivacity may be enough to break through Tassie\u2019s vanity, but it can\u2019t wholly elevate the movie around them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toward the end of Rebel Wilson\u2019s \u201cGirl Group,\u201d a fizzy, gaudy clone of \u201cPitch Perfect\u201d sculpted from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,106059,206,30957,46687],"class_list":["post-846443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-girl-group","tag-movies","tag-rebel-wilson","tag-toronto-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}