Sick Girl is a 2023 comedy focusing on a young woman who chooses to tell a white lie to her friends that ends up having huge consequences.
Secret secrets are no fun… Secret secrets hurt someone…err, everyone. Wren Pepper (Nina Dobrev) wants so desperately for things to go back to how they once were. 15 years ago was great, when her and her friends Cece (Stephanie Koenig), Laurel (Sherry Cola), and Jill (Hayley Magnus) were as tight as any foursome. Obviously, life happens, whether it be career, family, or anything in between. The friends have managed to stay in the same place, but the fun times they used to spend together have been replaced with stale and rote get-togethers.
Wren isn’t ready to accept the new normal. What does she do? Tell a little lie. Except the lie isn’t so little. Fed up with the uneventfulness on her birthday, Wren blurts out to the group that she has cancer. Her friends quickly rally around her stated affliction, and the old times she opined for are back in full force. However, news of her self-diagnosis soon spreads outside of her besties, and the facade becomes harder and harder to manage when confronted with actual individuals who are sick at the support group, like Leo (Brandon Mychal Smith).
Is what you can talk about as it pertains to a studio comedy in 2023 compared to 30, 20, even 10 years ago the same? Absolutely not, and there are pluses and minuses to that. Still, regardless of year, there are some things not worth trying to find humor in, both because it’s in relatively poor taste to do so and the scenario is nearly impossible to . Both of those factors can be applied to Sick Girl.
After a long career working in the casting department for a handful of Christopher Nolan films and other popular 2000’s comedies (Zombieland and 22 Jump Street), writer/director Jennifer Cram gets her first crack at seeing her own feature from ideation to delivery. Sadly, there’s not much here that lends itself to visual excitement, and the early montages here and there feel like minute-eaters instead of anything funny and/or touching. At least there are some entertaining needle drops.
It’s easy to see what Sick Girl is after in examining how a bond of sisterhood can dissipate due to the demands of a male-driven world (all of Wren’s friends are struggling to find footing in career/motherhood/dating). Early, it even posits the thoughtful question—subtly—if Wren’s rage against the system isn’t solely feminist-driven, but just a desire to go back to the more blissful days of their existence. This could have been a more interesting examination that didn’t need a fake cancer proclamation at the core of its story. To Cram’s credit, she does understand that the lie can’t last the entire runtime, but when the obvious comes to roost, Sick Girl turns into a third act yawning reclamation project for its lead character. Wren isn’t a bad person, but it’s difficult to come away at the end feeling like she’s a dramatically different person than the one we meet early on.
Tough to say if stronger script details and characterization would result in a better lead output and humor on the end of its star Dobrev, but I’d like to think it wouldn’t hurt. Similar in ways to Jennifer Lawrence and her star comedic turn in No Hard Feelings, Dobrev seems to have the ability to be funny with an adequately written script yet might be missing the inherent improv skills to carry a film up a level or two. Collectively, the banter between her, Cola, Koenig, and Magnus contributes to sporadic amusement spots, but nothing vibrant.
Sick Girl is akin to the overall cringiness of the”Scott’s Tots” episode on The Office—without the slightly diverting B plot and zany characters. There’s not enough obvious humor to mine out of the situation, and the attempt at improvised humor leaves the whole thing feeling terminally hopeless.