Review: Let out two yawns for 'You Again'

Early on in the relentlessly shrill and awkward new comedy "You Again," a character asks for a blindfold.

Audience members may find themselves relating to this urge.

Although it's stuffed with badly beaten clichés, "You Again" has one fascinating aspect: It features two small, perky, blond, bursting-with-talent actresses named Kris-something who seem to have a knack for landing in bad movies.

The first would be Kristen Bell, originally from Metro Detroit and former wunderkind of TV's sassy "Veronica Mars." She's the star of this show.

The second is Kristin Chenoweth, the big-voiced Broadway sensation who never seems to fit in a film. She plays a wedding planner.

OK, it's not much, but trying to find anything of interest in this film is a chore.

Ms. Bell plays Marni, a high school geek-loser (yawn) who blossoms into a successful beauty in later years (double yawn). But she comes home to the wedding of her brother (James Wolk, another Michigan product being abused) only to find his future bride, Joanna (Odette Yustman), is the popular cheerleader who tormented her in high school.

It gets worse.

Marni's mother Gail (Jamie Lee Curtis) realizes that Joanna's treasured aunt, Mona (Sigourney Weaver), is her long lost frenemy from high school, as well. Let the witchy backstabbing begin.

Director Andy Fickman -- who helmed Bell's best film by far, "Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical" -- can't seem to catch his tone here. At times the movie veers toward being a musical, with dance numbers breaking out like hives, but mostly it's simply a far too broad comedy with no real laughs.

Kristin, Kristen: You can both do better. Actually, you can't do much worse.