The Wrong Girls Lives Up To A Comedy Style That's Been Underserved For Years

The Wrong Girls is the latest entry in a comedy sub-genre that hasn't been too prevalent in recent years. Starring Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat, the film focuses on a pair of slacker stoners in Los Angeles who, through a series of misunderstandings, end up taking an experimental drug that gives them extraordinary powers.

These turns don't fundamentally change who either woman is, though. Instead, they double down on being themselves, a pair of oddballs who would rather hang out and smoke weed than do literally anything else. It's a classic formula for comedy that was especially prevalent at the turn of the century.

As comedic tastes changed, this style of wacky adventure became more downplayed in the market. The Wrong Girls makes a fun case that this style of comedy can still work, though. In the process, it's a fun reminder of just how effectively silly and appropriately light a pair of goofball stoners can be at the center of a film.

The Wrong Girls Is A Love Letter To Stoner Comedies

The Wrong Girls is a throwback in more than one way, harkening back to an era of purposefully stupid stoner comedies that was prevalent at the turn of the century. The screwball duo has long been a fixture of comedy routines in the cinematic space, going all the way back to the days of Laurel and Hardy in the silent era.

One of the more surprisingly enduring renditions of this dynamic emerged in the 1970s with the comedy duo of Cheech and Chong, who infused most of their dimwitted antics with signifiers of the hippie movement and with stoner culture. This laid the foundation for an archetypal “stoner comedy" formula that plenty of movies have played with, especially at the turn if the century.

Dude, Where's My Car? and Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle both thrived in their takes of the formula, tweaking it by either leaning into ridiculous visual gags or adding a layer of social satire regarding depictions of race. Pineapple Express fused the concept with action movie stakes, and Ted combined it with Seth MacFarlane's brand of subversive sitcom energy.

The formula has been downplayed in more modern comedies, though, which have largely been more focused on teen dynamics or with grim undertones. That's a big part of what makes The Wrong Girls such a refreshingly silly showcase for Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat, as it directly references the days of Cheech and Chong in tone and presentation.

Frankie and Molly's home, full of elaborate bong setups and with piles of overdue bills, feels like a very modern riff on the blase casual nature of Cheech and Chong in decades past. Their back-and-forth and decidedly female perspective take cues from shows like Broad City, but it also feels very indebted to those earlier generations of stoner comedies that simply don't get made as much anymore.

2026 Is Oddly Perfect For Stoner Comedies

Part of what makes this return to form for the comedy sub-genre so fun is the way The Wrong Girls fully commits to it. This is a movie where pot brownies are used to defeat villains, psychic powers are unlocked through experimental concoctions, and LaKeith Stanfield is a secret agent who is quickly exhausted by everything around him.

It's a gonzo goofball comedy, with obvious emotional arcs that nevertheless work because of the performances and light sense of comedy. There are plenty of silly turns of phrase, comedic reveals, and weirdo performances that make it hard not to have fun with their goofy adventures. Even Pizza Movie​​​​​, which traffics in a similar vibe, doesn't quite have the same energy.

That movie feels more indebted to the teen movies of the 2000s like Superbad, albeit with a bit of that absurdist comedy that the stoner sub-genre has always catered to. The Wrong Girls fully embraces that style of comedy, leaning into a goofball approach to characters where their entire personality can be defined in a single gag.

It's also a strangely perfect time for that kind of comedy to reemerge. Marijuana is now legal in large swaths of the country, invalidating some of the tension of those old Cheech and Chong or Harold and Kumar movies. However, that doesn't detract from the sense that Frankie and Molly are fighting authority figures and for their own place in a broken system.

They do it by striving to overcome expectations while still staying true to their laid-back roots. The film has a focus on the way stress and tension can burn someone out or keep them from ever achieving their goals, especially with Frankie's attempts to ignore her status as a Stanford dropout and ignore it with joints and friendship.

The Wrong Girls is firmly rooted in modern culture while still embracing the specifically timeless comedy styling of an underserved genre. It's been years since a big-budget stoner comedy felt this ready to just be goofy for the sake of it, giving The Wrong Girls a tight connection to an older generation of comedy.