WASHINGTON -- The monster in "Bride Wars" is diabolical and insidious, duplicitous and horrifying. It replaces the film's sweet heroines with evil versions of themselves, zombie-eyed as they carry out the monster's bidding.

The monster's weapons are petits fours and tulle.

The monster is the wedding.

Its vehicle -- the wedding movie -- is a familiar one. We've been watching it for years. Here Comes the Crazy Bride. Again and again and again.

"Bride Wars," which opened Friday, is about, uh, bride wars.

Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway are Liv and Emma, childhood best pals who get engaged the same week, then book the same venue, then learn that due to a scheduling mix-up one of them has to choose another location, but the venue is the Plaza Hotel in June, so --

Wait, the plot is totally extraneous to this movie. You do not need to follow the plot, nor does your brain need to register inconsequential details like dialogue (it mostly takes place in a dialect known as "squeal") or grooms (essentially walking pants, played by Chris Pratt and Steve Howey, whom you have never heard of).

This movie is for people who are less about plot, more about place cards.

It's sort of like "27 Dresses" (released last January), in which a meek woman has been planning her nuptials since embryo, or like "Made of Honor" (May) in which an engagement prompts old friends to reconsider their platonic relationship, or like "Sex and the City: The Movie" (also May) in which wedding planning causes psychosis.

Oh, but you know what else it's like? "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), in which a drunken escapade liberates an otherwise prim character shortly before the big day.

In fact, just about any movie with organza in the production budget ends up looking something like this:

Girl, having already met Boy, begins a zany trip down the aisle, and often ends up at the front of the church with a different groom than she started out with.

(This last bit makes wedding movies the ultimate romantic comedies: The audience gets to see both flirtation and gown montages.)

The stories are the same, and the weddings in them are all the same, too: White ball gowns, blue garters, drunken uncles, teary moms, a getaway Rolls trailed by shoes and tin cans.

A wedding is a good device, says Murray Horwitz, director of the American Film Institute's Silver Theatre. "It's like in soap operas, when a scene isn't working right the director will say, 'Prop department, get me a gun!' The gun changes the whole scene because suddenly everyone knows what's at stake."

Viewers know what's at stake (eternal happiness), and they also know what to expect. "It's a highly qualified setting for a movie because everyone has these sentimental expectations," Horwitz says. "You can either punch holes in them or live up to them."

In the movies, planning the wedding becomes the ultimate test in the couple's relationship, and the catalyst that prompts the bride to "find herself." She gets plastered ("Bride Wars"), she spins insane lies ("Sweet Home Alabama"), she throws punches ("My Best Friend's Wedding").

If the groom can embrace the bride's edgy behavior ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding," "Runaway Bride"), that means that he can embrace her. But if the groom doesn't embrace her newfound spunk ("The Wedding Singer," "Wedding Crashers"), then she'll end up with a different, more awesome guy who does.

Either way, the wedding movie provides "cultural comfort food," Horwitz says, because everyone ends up happily ever after one way or another, like that tiny couple atop the cake.

It's all so different from the wedding in "Rachel Getting Married," which was released in October.

Coincidentally, that movie also stars Hathaway. In "Rachel," she played Kym, a drug addict on leave from rehab to perform maid-of-honor duties at her sister's wedding. Hathaway's performance has generated Oscar buzz, but anyone who saw the movie knows the real star (besides pain) was the wedding. Its preparations served as the backdrop to the action.

What a wedding it was: The wedding march was played on electric guitar, the (non-Indian) bride and bridesmaids wore saris, the guests participated in an atonal chant during the processional. And this was all before the Carnival dancers showed up for the reception.

The effect was jarring. Well, the whole movie was jarring -- made even more jarring by the fact that all our wedding expectations were AWOL. Where was the catfight? Where was the Chicken Dance? Where was the bridezilla?

Of course, "Rachel Getting Married," despite its title and its rehearsal dinner, was not a wedding movie. There was never any doubt that Rachel and Sidney would get married. The torment in that movie was family trauma, and not the madcap kind, but the kind that really can capsize happily ever after.

In other words, it was like real life.

Which is NOT what we want from a wedding movie.

"Weddings are expected to be this burdensome event," says Rebecca Mead, author of "One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding." "There's this idea that: 'Oh, this is the first real test of our relationship. If we can survive this, we can survive anything.' Like your wedding is a hurricane or something."

Of course most brides don't get in wrestling matches at the altar. They don't, midway down the aisle, decide to marry Cary Grant instead of John Howard. Those things only happen in the movies.

Or in our wildest dreams. Or our worst nightmares.

But as long as wedding movies work as stand-ins for our darkest fears and deepest desires, they will keep being made.

Just consider Hathaway's upcoming project, which is called "The Fiance." Completing Hathaway's nuptials trifecta, it's about a woman who tries to break off an engagement to a man her parents adore.

Here Comes the Bride. Again and again and again.