In The Wrong Girls, Seth Rogen Plays a Telepathic Cat

The Wrong Girls opens in theaters across the country on Friday, August 14, and the oddest line in its cast list sits nowhere near the top. Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani play cats. Not talking animals in a family cartoon — two ordinary house pets named Dio and GG, who become conversational only after their owners swallow an experimental drug and wake up able to hear them.

The movie runs 100 minutes and comes from Neon, the distributor better known for austere awards contenders than for bong jokes. Kristen Stewart plays Frankie. Alia Shawkat plays Molly. Behind the camera is Dylan Meyer, who wrote the script and is directing her first feature; she is also Stewart's wife, and Stewart produced. UPI reports the story grew out of one of Meyer's own friendships.

That combination — a first-time director, a marquee lead, a talking-cat premise — lands on one of the busiest Fridays of the summer. Roughly thirteen other titles open the same day, including PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie. Early reviews are friendly rather than ecstatic: SlashFilm scored it 6.5 out of 10.

What Actually Happens in The Wrong Girls

Frankie and Molly are broke, codependent roommates in Los Angeles, living paycheck to paycheck and bong rip to bong rip. A man credited only as Not Metal Head Dave, played by LaKeith Stanfield, mistakes Frankie for someone else and hands her a briefcase packed with experimental chemicals. The two decide to flip the contents for fast cash. First, naturally, they sample the merchandise.

What follows is one long, chaotic night. The drug leaves them telepathic — with each other, and with the cats. Meanwhile the people who were supposed to receive that briefcase want it back, which is how a hangout comedy about two women on a couch acquires shootouts.

The Cast Keeps Getting Stranger

The ensemble is far deeper than a low-budget comedy usually affords, and most of it flashes past in single scenes. That's part of the joke: the film keeps producing famous faces the way the briefcase keeps producing trouble.

The Two at the Center

Stewart and Shawkat carry nearly every frame. Critics have singled out the pairing rather than either performance alone — two willfully clueless friends who are funnier together than the script sometimes deserves. Shawkat has spent two decades in this register, going back to Arrested Development; Stewart, whose recent choices have skewed severe, is visibly enjoying the break.

The One-Scene Bench

Kate McKinnon appears as Dr. Chapman and Geena Davis as Dr. Olsen. Tony Hale plays Martin Flynn, Zack Fox plays Josh, and Cate Blanchett turns up credited as a deep sea expert. None of them are the reason to buy a ticket, but the sheer density of them tells you how much goodwill Meyer's script attracted.

The Cats

Rogen voices Dio and Nanjiani voices GG. Rogen also produced alongside Evan Goldberg through Point Grey Pictures, the company behind their own comedies, which explains how a debut feature landed this roster. Ty Segall wrote the score; Todd Banhazl shot it.

Why a Stoner Comedy Feels Retro Now

Here's the wrinkle nobody making this film could avoid. The stoner comedy was built on illegality — the paranoia, the sketchy dealer, the cops at the door. Recreational cannabis is now legal in about half of US states and sold in storefronts with loyalty programs. SlashFilm's review makes the point directly: the genre feels antiquated, which gives the movie a period-piece air even though it isn't set in the past.

Meyer's workaround is to make the drug fictional and the stakes absurd. Telepathy isn't something you can buy in a dispensary in Denver or Los Angeles, so the illegal-thrill engine still runs. Whether that reads as clever or as a dodge seems to be where critics divide.

What Reviewers Are Saying

The consensus so far is warm and qualified. Reviewers describe a shaggy, low-key film that works best when it slows down and lets its two leads talk nonsense at each other, and works least when the plot machinery kicks in. SlashFilm's summary is the tidiest version of that verdict.

A hang-out movie with occasional shoot-outs, "The Wrong Girls" feels shaggy and low-key in all the right ways.

Deadline, IndieWire and UPI landed in similar territory: the performances rescue material that is thinner than the cast list suggests. That's a familiar shape for a first feature, and a better outcome than most debuts get.

Is It Worth Your Friday Night?

Set expectations at pleasant, not essential. If you want two funny actors riffing for an hour and a half, this delivers exactly that. If you need a tight thriller plot, look elsewhere on a crowded weekend. Neon typically opens smaller and expands, so a modest first-weekend number won't mean much on its own.

The thing actually worth watching is the second-week hold. Comedies live or die on word of mouth, and a 100-minute hangout movie with a cult-shaped cast is precisely the sort of title that either vanishes by Labor Day or becomes the thing everyone streams in October. Check showtimes near you before Friday — screen counts on films like this tend to shrink fast.