Kimber Myers
Women have continued to see their rights disappear practically every day in the hellscape that is 2026, but at least we’re finally getting the wonderfully stupid buddy stoner comedy we’ve always deserved with The Wrong Girls. This movie will not correct all the injustices perpetrated against us this year (or even just today), but it did make me feel better for all of its 99 minutes. The Wrong Girls is the rare movie that should be longer, if only so I could continue to feel this high for a little more time without having to actually ingest or inject anything.
The Wrong Girls isn’t just the first major buddy stoner comedy about two female friends who love each other as much as they love weed, but it also represents a real feminist milestone: a movie where women can be dirtbag burnouts too. (Progress!) Frankie (Kristen Stewart) and Molly (Alia Shawkat) are roommates in a worn-down L.A. apartment where they live alongside their lifesize Celine Dion cardboard standee and two cats, Dio and GG. Frankie is a brilliant underachiever who got into Stanford and flunked out. Currently employed by delivery service Kwik Things, she might cite her most impressive recent achievement as making a Rube Goldberg-esque bong, naturally named the Bong-o-tron. (Do not get me wrong: this is a very impressive bong.)
Meanwhile, Molly makes a living doing contract work like inventory spreadsheets, but her real passion is for cooking insane creations like blue cheese brownies that are best enjoyed while high. She dreams of making a living doing what she loves, but she’s barely getting by with a “respectable” job. So Frankie and Molly are just as bothered by the fact that they’re two weeks late on rent as that they’re running low on weed.
While Frankie is out partying, she is mistaken for her doppelganger Frances, who happens to be a scientist and her ex’s new girlfriend. A mysterious man (LaKeith Stanfield) gives her a briefcase filled with bottles of an experimental psychedelic intended for her lab-employed lookalike. Frankie sees the unknown drugs as a way that they can make rent, but first, the friends need to test the merchandise to see what they’ll be selling. Yet the lava-lap-like-liquid does more than get Frankie and Molly high; it gives them—and their cats, who lapped up the contents of a broken bottle and are now voiced by Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani—a psychic connection. It also makes them the targets of three dangerous Dutch dudes, who want the powerful drugs back on behalf of their boss.
The Wrong Girls is a Hitchcockian tale of mistaken identity, which shares some of the same DNA with The Big Lebowski. It’s also of a piece with last year’s goddamn delightful One of Them Days. It manages all of this without feeling like it’s treading in the same (bong) waters as any of its predecessors. It’s wild and all over the place, mixing genres and throwing everything at the wall, including a giant squid, telepathic cats, and a musical number, but somehow—just like Molly’s blue cheese brownies—it all works.
Shawkat’s comedic chops are well established from work on shows like Arrested Development and Search Party, so it’s no surprise how funny she is here. Meanwhile, Stewart most frequently plays it straight (no pun intended), winning acclaim in more serious films like Spencer, Clouds of Sils Maria, and Personal Shopper. Yet writer-director Dylan Meyer (who’s also married to Stewart in real life) clearly knows how funny Stewart can be. The actress has only occasionally gotten to show this side of herself on the big screen (notably as the best part of the Charlie’s Angels remake), but she’s hilarious in The Wrong Girls, bringing a chaotic energy and deadpan delivery that is perfect for this film. Even as an embarrassingly straight-edge person, I was wheezing with laughter over the trouble these women were in and their utter obliviousness to it and almost everything around them.
The Wrong Girls looks at these two delightfully dim protagonists and says, “Would you get a load of these dum-dums?” Yet it expresses this sentiment with pure affection for these characters, who are very smart at very specific things and wildly stupid about (most) others. It’s unclear how Frankie and Molly have made it this far in life, but they have a lot of luck—and each other. Their friendship is the core of this movie, even while they’re at a crossroads with Molly’s supportive boyfriend (Zack Fox) asking her to move in with him, potentially leaving Frankie thinking she’ll have to fend for herself.
The Wrong Girls is a good trip. Alongside Stewart and Shawkat, Meyer has made the kind of cinematic experience that is the closest thing squares like me will experience to a drug-induced euphoria. It’s strange and specific, evoking giggles and snort-laughs with its goofy charms, and I never wanted it to end.
