Rebel Wilson's New Comedy 'Girl Group' Never Finds Its Voice | TIFF Review
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Just two years after premiering her directorial debut, The Deb, at the Toronto International Film Festival, Rebel Wilson is back with another musical comedy. But while The Deb, which earned largely positive reviews, was adapted from a stage show, her new directorial feature, Girl Group, has an original screenplay written by Wilson. That change likely doesn’t explain the difference between the two films, but this time around, the jokes feel heavily recycled, the characters never really take shape, and the music doesn’t exactly fill in that missing spark.
Even with appreciated and gasp-worthy appearances by Melanie C from the Spice Girls and Shaznay Lewis of All Saints, there’s surprisingly little to get excited about in Girl Group. Having watched the film at its world premiere in Toronto this September, I noticed how scarce the laughter was from the audience, too. For a film built to bring the house down with comedy and a bubblegum pop style that some of us genuinely miss, the silence said plenty.
What Is ‘Girl Group’ About?
In addition to directing and writing Girl Group, Wilson plays Tassie Young, a former teenage pop star who left her group Gurlfriends for a solo career that never really took off. When it’s announced that the group is getting back together, Tassie feels it’s the perfect time to reconnect with the girls — but discovers from her manager Gabriella (Jennifer Coolidge) that her former bandmates have replaced her with a new singer, played by Nicole Scherzinger. Threading in a bit of stereotype, Tassie takes the news pretty hard, and a DUI soon lands her in court-ordered community service at a Los Angeles youth center run by an awkward yet encouraging mentor named Ken (Randall Park).
Ken assigns her to coach a group of young girls who want to make it in the music industry: Tyler (Chabely Ponce), Kiah (Daniela Couso), La La (Lilah Pate), Henrietta (Mia Kaplan), Bailey (Bailey Stender), and Pippin (Ana Yi Puig). While the dynamic of the group gets off to a bumpy start and the girls clash with Tassie’s style, they soon form a bond through their shared love of music. Eventually calling themselves Xplode, they enter a competition where they're up against the Cream Team — a group that includes Bailey’s older sister Jess, played by Loren Gray. Cream Team's mentor, Miss Candy (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), is determined to win, especially since she has a rather dark connection to Tassie. But as the stakes get higher and Wilson’s character begins to view the girls as her ticket back to stardom, coaching the group also begins to mean deciding whether she cares more about their future or her own.
From start to finish, you can see there’s a deeply affecting story in here somewhere, especially when we watch flashbacks with Tassie’s own mentor from high school, Mrs. Bowmaker (Sally Hawkins), coming in as the maternal support she so badly needs. But Girl Group races through those relationships in pursuit of the next big gag or musical number, never taking shape into a feel-good movie reminiscent of Wilson’s previous work in Pitch Perfect. Instead, it takes that underdog story we all so easily love and struggles across its 96 minutes to make these girls feel like real people within it.
‘Girl Group’s Writing Keeps Recycling the Same Jokes
Before getting into the heart of Girl Group, it’s important to know what a film like this could have meant for pop-loving viewers, young and old. As someone who grew up on the Spice Girls, All Saints, Billie Piper, Atomic Kitten, Samantha Mumba, you name it — that whole wave of British pop felt like a world you could sincerely belong to. Girl Group, in the most fun way, borrows the look of that era and its music, but never really gets at why that world meant so much to the young girls and boys who grew up with it. It skips quickly from Gurlfriends’ past to Tassie’s present, using nostalgia just to set up another underdog competition.
On top of that, Wilson’s script rarely finds its own comedic rhythm. Tassie has the outsized confidence and bad judgment of many characters that Wilson has played well before, but there’s little here that makes those qualities surprising. And the unnecessary gross-out humor is an especially telling example of a tone and writing disconnect. For a film that doesn’t exactly rely on crude humor, one joke brings Bridesmaids immediately to mind, without the buildup or character work that made that film’s outrageous moments land. Girl Group even mentions Pitch Perfect by name, drawing attention to its familiar group of unlikely singers and rivals, but as the competition gives the movie a destination, the young performers have too little room to develop distinct personalities or a bond worth rooting for.
I was also bothered by the gap between the film’s message and its jokes. It wants to celebrate girls supporting one another and resisting the music industry’s narrow expectations, yet Henrietta and even Bailey’s size becomes an easy source of humor. Sure, you can argue the film is seen through Tassie’s eyes, but those tones feel especially misguided in a story about young women trying to define themselves on their own terms. The script could have made sharper jokes about the pressure to look and act a certain way as a pop star. But instead, it falls back on the very assumptions it claims to question. By the finale, its message of empowerment barely feels earned.
‘Girl Group’s Cast Gives It a Few Bright Spots
With a cast packed full of singers and very funny people, Girl Group should be a good time even when the story hits some familiar notes. Thankfully, there are a few bright spots that allow it to feel that way. The young women playing the members of Xplode bring energy to the musical numbers and are genuinely fun to watch, though the script gives them little room to stand out as individuals. Scherzinger seems to enjoy playing Tassie’s replacement, who we only know as “Popstar,” even if the character is basically just a plot device who exists only to get a reaction out of Tassie. Seeing Melanie C and Lewis was a particular pleasure, but I only wish the movie had more moments that felt as exciting. While Robbie Williams’ wife and former X-Factor panelist Ayda Field shows up as a reporter, these additions simply exist for show-and-tell.
Meanwhile, Park brings an easy warmth to Ken, the youth center director; his humor feels natural in a movie where so many jokes are trying too hard. Coolidge is fun to watch here in a role that's a bit more tempered and relied upon as the voice of reason, compared to the unfair role she's sometimes pigeonholed into. But O’Donnell is the best as Miss Candy. The Derry Girls star throws herself brilliantly into the rival coach’s competitive streak, giving every scene she’s in that sharp comic snap that Girl Group is missing, and playing to the outrageous comedy it so badly wants to be.
Wilson works hard to keep everything afloat, but Tassie gives her little room to play. Her confidence and willingness to look foolish have served her well before, but this time around, the film repeats those beats without giving her much of a foundation. The story moves through Tassie’s setbacks so quickly that even Wilson sometimes seems unconvinced by the emotional turns it asks her to make. And while Park and O’Donnell can make individual scenes funny, neither they nor the young cast can carry a film that gives each of them so little to build on. This is what makes Girl Group so disappointing: It has the performers, the music, and a premise with room for a funny comeback story, yet its best moments are too scattered to make it worth seeking out.
Pros & Cons
- The young cast is genuinely fun to watch in the musical numbers alongside the nostalgia factor led by Mel C and Shaznay Lewis.
- Jamie-Lee O'Donnell steals her scenes as Miss Candy.
- Randall Park and Jennifer Coolidge bring warmth and some welcome laughs.
- The film uses British pop nostalgia without exploring why it mattered.
- Recycled 'Pitch Perfect' beats and misplaced gross-out humor rarely land.
- The rushed story gives Tassie and the girls too little room to develop.
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