Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: Maggie finds herself the target of her sister’s wedding-thirsty bridesmaids after unintentionally catching the bouquet, messing up the bride-to-be queue.
About: This script finished in second place in this month’s Logline Showdown. We have a new Logline Showdown every month. The deadline for the next one is Thursday, June 22nd, 10pm Pacific Time. If you want to participate, send me your title, genre, and logline. The script *does* have to be written as the winner will get a review. You can send all entries to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Writer: Kevin Revie
Details: 88 pages
The Hailster for Maggie?
Okay, so we had a snafu behind the scenes this week. Adam, who won with his script, The Dinosaur War, had been submitting the script to Logline Showdown for a while. At one point, he was submitting it as a feature. And this time, he was submitting it as a pilot.
Except I didn’t list it as a pilot. I listed it as a feature. Since everybody voted on it as a feature, both Adam and I decided that it shouldn’t be featured this week, which means the second place script, Petal to the Metal, is stepping up to the plate for this week’s review.
I’m actually excited about this script. I’m in the mood for something light and fun. And we don’t review a lot of romantic comedies around here. So I’m curious what Kevin has in store for us.
27 year-old Maggie isn’t the wedding type. So she’s far from thrilled that she has to go to her sister, Sierra’s, wedding. And she’s even less thrilled when she inadvertently catches the flower bouquet, anointing her as the next single lady to put a ring on it.
Not long after this happens, Sierra’s wolf-like bridesmaids, Evie, Zara, and Kira, get dumped by their long-term boyfriends. They immediately believe that some sort of curse has occurred because Maggie caught that bouquet.
So they conspire with Sierra to find a man for Maggie. The sooner they can marry her off, the quicker they can get back in line for their own marriages. They go to dating sites, find some dudes, and send the dudes off to pretend-bump-into Maggie and work their charms on her.
There’s only one problem. Maggie’s gay! She doesn’t want any sausage with her eggs. And when she finds out that the men are only coming on to her because of the evil bridesmaids, she does a reverse prank where she pretends to get engaged to one of the men, only to then throw it in the girls’ faces with a big fat “PUNK’D!”
After the fallout from the punking, Zara confronts Maggie, wondering why she can’t just get married so the rest of them can get married… BUT THEN KISSES MAGGIE!!! Maggie’s down with it and she and Zara engage in some extracurricular activities. But afterwards, Zara is unsure if she wants to make their new love public. The uncertainty of their relationship pushes us towards the big climax where Zara will either go public with her feelings or take the more traditional route in life.
Man, this was a wild one.
I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. But it is definitely not what I got. I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
I guess we should start with the main character, since that was the topic of yesterday’s article. I liked Maggie. She’s the one getting pushed around in this story. So there’s a natural inclination to root for her.
But I wasn’t sure if Maggie was the main character after the first act. I don’t know if she’s the main character after reading the whole script!
Let’s start with that first act, though.
We don’t meet Maggie right away. We only hear her voice as she narrates her sister’s life. We never see Maggie’s own everyday life, the section of the script that best shows the reader who your hero is. And then, even after the big “catching of the bouquet” moment, we shift our focus to these other girls – Evie, Zara, and Kira.
They then control the second act. They are the active characters. It is their goal – to find a man for Maggie and accelerate the courting – that drives the story.
If the first act barely focuses on Maggie and the beginning of the second act is driven by three characters besides Maggie… then who’s the main character here? Does this movie have a main character? Or is it meant to be an ensemble?
I still don’t know the answer to these questions.
Then, when you throw this sidewinder of a twist at us – that Maggie is gay – we’re really unsure what’s going on. After that reveal, the original concept disappears. We are in a completely different movie than the one we started with.
Then you have Zara revealing that she’s gay too! And that she likes Maggie! Which was an interesting way to go but it wasn’t set up at all. There was no official setup that Zara was gay or interested in Maggie. So when Zara plants a smackaroo on Maggie, it feels random.
Not to mention, Maggie comes out of that kiss looking bad. All we’ve seen so far is Zara be horrible to Maggie. And the second she kisses Maggie, Maggie’s down with it??? How bout showing a spine? Telling her to f-off for being such a terrible person to her. Rewarding awfulness does not endear us to your hero. Assuming Maggie is the hero!!
I was trying to think of a comparable movie that had this structure. It started off as one thing and became something else. The 40 Year Old Virgin comes to mind. That started off as a straight comedy with this guy trying to get laid for the first time. Then it shifted into a rom-com with him in a relationship.
But I’m not convinced this plot was as smoothly executed as that one. That plot felt planned. This plot felt like things were being thought up on the fly. That’s usually the case when a script deviates heavily from the original concept because the writer runs out of plot for that storyline and has to come up with something else to keep the keys depressing.
Then we’ve got this logline issue. The logline to Petal to the Metal is misleading. I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if I knew what was coming. So something like: “When a closeted 20-something unintentionally catches the bouquet at her sister’s wedding, she screws up the bride-to-be queue, resulting in the furious wedding-thirsty bridesmaids taking control of her dating life in an attempt to get her married ASAP. “
I know, it’s long. I would revise it a few times before sending it anywhere. But at least it represents what the script is. Readers can get pretty upset when the script is different from the logline.
Overall, I thought this script was okay. It’s too messy to get a ‘worth the read’ though. And I would’ve preferred to read the script I was promised. But it has its moments. It had a few lines I genuinely laughed out loud at, like this one: “I talked to an AI chatbot yesterday while drinking a sangria alone. That’s not okay.”
Now that you know the actual story, you can go in better prepared than I did, which will probably mean you’ll enjoy the script more.
Script link: Petal to the Metal
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Economy of words. Economy of words is SO IMPORTANT in comedy because comedy scripts must be easy to read. There were occasional lines in Petal to the Metal that violated the ‘economy of words’ law, like this one: “The bouquet, notably rose-less and stem-wrapped with ample precaution, comes HURDLING toward Maggie.” Why not just, “The bouquet comes hurdling toward Maggie?”
Or, on the dialogue end, we get lines like this:“Well, this is confusingly unnerving.” Why not just, “Well, this is unnerving?”
There will always be times when you’re more verbose. But, for the most part, screenwriting is about economy of words, saying as much as possible in the smallest package possible.
