"Sick Girl" is irresponsible and terminally unfunny

Sick Girl (2023)

Female-driven or not, “Sick Girl” has to be one of the most irresponsible comedies in recent memory. Watching a selfish protagonist let an unforgivable lie get wildly out of hand could be funny—and it is played for laughs here—but it seems like the movie is late to the party with the notion that “women can be just as messy and horrible as the guys.” Not that you can’t make a movie about a character lying that they have cancer, but “Sick Girl” needed a second or third opinion on the script.

Nina Dobrev plays Wren Pepper (now that’s a name!), a codependent thirtysomething who doesn’t have her life together. She drinks too much and she still smokes, as if nothing has changed in fifteen years. Her friends, Laurel (Sherry Cola), Cece (Stephanie Koenig), and Jill (Hayley Magnus), have their own responsibilities—respectively, training for a marathon, just trying to stay awake with a young daughter at home, and balancing a high-stress job and a kid—but Wren is a sloppy mess who still needs a friend to bail her out (even literally from prison after getting too drunk). After Wren feels they’ve drifted apart so much, she finally snaps during her low-key birthday celebration and lies about having cancer. From there, Wren somehow convinces her three best friends that the best treatment is spending more time together, leading to a speedy recovery. 

Making her writing-directing debut, longtime casting director Jennifer Cram means “Sick Girl” to be funny, even poignant, about female friendship, not a nuanced character study about an attention-craving liar. Typically an appealing actor with the right material, Nina Dobrev is tasked with the impossible as Wren. She tries but fails to make us care about this immature, unlikable character and whether or not her friends will still love her after she comes clean. These overly gullible friends go so far as to plan a fundraising event for her “tonsil throat cancer” and two out of three shave their heads. Read the full review at GuyAtTheMovies.com

Grade: D

Lionsgate released “Sick Girl” (99 min.) in theaters and on digital and on demand on October 20, 2023.