This spring, IndieWire declared the stoner movie practically dead. Little did we know, filmmaker Dylan Meyer was already holding the antidote.

Opening with the camera swallowed by the waves of the Pacific Ocean, “The Wrong Girls” immediately establishes itself as a film that needs to be tactile. Soon, we’re beneath the surface, watching a bioluminescent squid spray its ink as the title blossoms across the screen — the words themselves suggesting an intrinsic understanding of stoner culture. Very Deadhead. Very good start.

From there, we’re transported to Casa de Chill Zone, the Los Angeles home shared by best friends Frankie (Kristen Stewart) and Molly (Alia Shawkat). Starry-eyed, sharp-tongued, and mostly warmhearted, the roomies are watching a nature documentary, discussing how they supposedly “solved climate change” the previous night, and lamenting their desperate need for rent money.

Recognizable? Absolutely. But “The Wrong Girls” doesn’t fully lock in until Frankie gets her ass to work.

Leaving Molly at home to experiment with blue cheese and THC as brownie ingredients, the Kwik Thingz delivery girl heads out in uniform. She startles herself by activating a talking lawn ornament (again, relatable!), then arrives with a “cheese sculpture” at the home of some rich yuppie (Tony Hale). He’s mostly ignoring her, but breaks his train of thought long enough to ask one magnificent question.

“Are you literally smoking a lit joint right now?”

“My bad,” Frankie says, flicking the evidence out of her mouth and onto his driveway.

It’s the beginning of a movie that reinvigorates the stoner comedy in countless ways. So clever you want to grab Meyer by the shoulders and stare deep into her eyes until she really gets the compliment, “The Wrong Girls” bottles a new era for 420-friendly filmmaking by locating the sweet spot where being a pothead is still somewhat taboo — even in California.

Legalization has flattened the narrative stakes that used to make weed movies work. Getting high no longer automatically puts a character at odds with the cops, their parents, or another authority figure, so marijuana has lost some of the low-level transgression that sustained classics from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” to “Pineapple Express.”

But Frankie isn’t funny because she’s afraid of being arrested. She’s funny because being brazenly checked-out from modern society, even while functioning within it, still feels socially incorrect. “The Wrong Girls” understands that weed is mainstream in 2026, but being visibly and unapologetically high is still seen by plenty of people as a kind of offense.

Is living your life from behind a curtain of smoke, particularly in a modern world this dire, really a bad thing?

Testing that theory, Molly and Frankie start the film at a crossroads. Ask Molly’s boyfriend Josh (Zack Fox) and he’ll tell you the girls’ shared comfort may be holding one or both women back. Frankie dropped out of an engineering program at Stanford years before, and Molly could be a professional baker if her talents weren’t always diverted toward party antics. Their friendship is an obvious life raft. But from the outside, it can also resemble an anchor.

Frankie confronts that insecurity when she goes alone to see an ex-boyfriend at a concert and finds him with a successful scientist who, minus the Lisa Loeb glasses, looks eerily like her. Following an altercation, Frankie is left half-drunk and wearing her rival’s broken frames when a mysterious man we’ll come to know as Not Metal Head Dave (a pitch-perfect LaKeith Stanfield) makes a terrible mistake. Yep, that’s how Frankie winds up with a briefcase containing “the most important scientific breakthrough of our time.”

The glowing substance inside, we eventually learn, was derived from the wordless coexistence of deep-sea creatures and designed to address humanity’s urgent need for empathy. But stuck in a money jam, Frankie and Molly immediately decide to sell it like any other recreational drug. Of course, not before taking two vials themselves — y’know, just to make sure they’re safe.

The psychedelic sequence that follows, punctuated by three European henchmen tailing the girls in a black SUV, is funny enough. But it’s not until the next morning, when Frankie and Molly feel the brain they already tend to share working on an actual telepathic level, that “The Wrong Girls” kicks into high gear.

Zoning out while the world feels like it’s on fire can be a kind of superpower, and Meyer uses supernatural abilities amplified by THC to explore how the stoner lifestyle can both mess up your day and save you from yourself. Think “Superbad” meets “Smiley Face,” with a nautical “Spider-Man” twist.

Stewart, having the absolute time of her life, allows the cool persona she’s cultivated across the modern indie scene to give way to an insecure brattiness that’s wonderfully refreshing. Adding syllables to words she’s annoyed to say (you’d be shocked how much disdain she can fit inside the name “Josh”), Stewart makes Frankie sound fundamentally different from any character she has played before — save for maybe a few bits on “SNL.” She’s highly capable but beaten down by a world that has made her feel like she isn’t enough, and just smart enough to almost think her way out of that trap.

But Frankie needs Molly and the sunny homemaker energy she brings to everyday life. Recalling her turn as a Texas waitress and another great best friend in Drew Barrymore’s “Whip It,” Shawkat plays Molly like your sweetest childhood friend crossed with a blissed-out Keebler Elf. When Frankie gets down on herself, Molly rattles off obstacles they’ve already escaped together. Whether inventing the Bong-a-Tron or freeing themselves after hours trapped inside a Party City parking lot, these misadventures almost always hinge on weed.

That isn’t a reflection of two friends struggling to spend time together sober. Rather, marijuana is part of the private language keeping Molly and Frankie afloat, and instead of feeling ashamed, the soulmates have designed their lives around celebrating weed as a kind of romance. There are moments when you want Molly and Frankie to kiss instead of toke up, but it ultimately feels more authentic that they don’t. Suffice to say, women have been the sexual punchline in party movies for too long, and “The Wrong Girls” finally gives stoner chicks access to the messy joy the genre has historically reserved for men.

The fantasy and sci-fi elements prove somewhat trickier for Meyer to navigate, but that mainly leads to happy accidents. As the increasingly zany plot heightens the stakes, her script — chock-full of hysterical lines like “What day is it? March?” — repeatedly steers the girls’ attention inward. The pacing feels off throughout much of the film, with comic and contemplative asides gumming up the central caper. But that shagginess is redeemed by how tactile “The Wrong Girls” remains.

Birds chirp as Frankie zones out while talking to the landlord. Later, she and Molly return to Hale’s rich guy hoping to sell the drugs while wearing matching cocktail dresses made from garbage bags. (Their house has been burgled, by the way.) An extended bit involving his maddeningly sleek front door, which just won’t close, does nothing for the plot and everything for the vibe.

These distractions make the movie resemble its heroines. They interrupt the action but deepen our connection to Frankie and Molly, allowing “The Wrong Girls” to exhibit the same introspection it locates in their lifestyle. Meyer makes space to laugh, look around, and fixate on the wrong object. The result will pleasantly scratch the brain this movie was made to reach.

If the experimental drug also at the heart of “The Wrong Girls” isn’t real, almost everything else about this extremely Los Angeles production is. The movie captures the very deep relationship so many stoner Angelenos have with their living rooms. Frankie’s suggestion that they “hole up in the Chill Zone until this Kock problem blows over” (Kock is the corporation chasing them for the drugs) lands less like a joke than a reasonable response to life today. And the supportive environment these two friends have built over a decade-plus allows them to retreat into a daily routine that gives them comfort. One of their biggest devastations doesn’t come from being followed, but learning the cheap buffet they frequent may close.

Even Dio and GG, the girls’ cats (voiced by Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani), have distinct strains of snooty homebody energy. Able to communicate with the animals as well as each other — and using Stanfield as their endlessly funny straight man — Stewart and Shawkat embody the real world creeping in on the safety of an L.A. home without making that collision dire. Kate McKinnon is similarly delightful as Dr. Chapman, a beleaguered genius who becomes the girls’ ally despite repeatedly insisting they should be dead. (Geena Davis appears in a part so small you could see the movie and forget she was there.)

The details are impeccable, from the EDGLRD T-shirt spotted on the rich guy’s son to the “818” tattoo flying across Frankie’s knuckles when she beats him at “Street Fighter.” Slasher synths lend the psychedelia a “Goosebumps” energy that makes nearly all of Los Angeles feel like Halloween night. Through kaleidoscopic lighting and inventive camerawork, Meyer roots her world in the kind of DIY mysticism you might associate with, say, a pizza tattoo.

Pay attention to the cardboard cutout of Celine Dion in the kitchen, too. She’s more important than you’d think. Those recognizable totems keep “The Wrong Girls” wondrous and nonthreatening even as its plot becomes increasingly action-packed. Violence gives way to dance (yes, literal dance) in a feel-good movie that doesn’t ignore the not-so-feel-good conditions making Frankie and Molly relatable. “How much rent is enough rent?” is only one of several surprisingly insightful questions they ask, and Meyer even takes a position on gun control without preaching.

Most importantly, “The Wrong Girls” rejects Josh’s assumption that growing up requires dismantling the life Frankie and Molly have built. Their lifestyle can grow. The mentality they share — and the friendship sustaining it — is a beautiful and powerful thing. In a world inundated with rage bait and political turmoil, that’s a mighty valuable export.

At one point, Frankie can’t open the drug briefcase and collapses onto the floor like a marionette, announcing, “Too hard! I quit!” Just days before her film opens nationwide, Meyer’s Instagram bio reads: “It’s good to give up.” That’s an incredibly compelling thought today, and perhaps a way forward for anyone struggling to cope. Sometimes giving up isn’t surrender. Sometimes it means refusing the exhausting terms you’ve been handed and returning to the people, places, and pleasures that make another future possible.

With her effervescent directorial debut, Meyer announces herself as a cinematic Caterpillar for the Alice in Wonderlands of our time. The great American stoner comedy isn’t dead. It just needed the wrong girls to save it.

Grade: A-

From Neon, “The Wrong Girls” is in theaters on Friday, August 14.

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EXCLUSIVE: Neal Huff (Fallout, A Murder at the End of the World), Gaby Hoffmann (Transparent, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere), and Sky Yang (Last Days, Rebel Moon) will star in The Best of Us, the upcoming Paramount+ limited series from writers Tobias Lindholm and Frank Pugliese. The series was previously known as 9/12.

The Best of Us dramatizes a landmark case that reshaped the fight for accountability: a relentless legal war that stretched nearly a decade to secure almost $1 billion in compensation for first responders who fell gravely ill in the wake of 9/11.

Jeremy Strong leads the cast as renowned class action lawyer Jason Smith, who risked everything to take on entrenched institutions, exposing the politics, greed, corruption and betrayal that compounded tragedy, set against the emergency workers’ remarkable unity and bravery as The World Trade Center was collapsing.

The Best of Us cast also includes Barry Pepper as Coach, a former NYPD police officer and 9/11 first responder suffering from leukemia, a result of his work at Ground Zero, and Andrea Riseborough as Molly, Coach’s resilient wife who is deeply concerned about her husband’s health and family’s future.

The newly added trio and who they will play can be found below.

Huff will play Peter Allen, Jason’s (Strong) pragmatic colleague at the law firm who is a sounding board and early on questions the viability of the case.

Hoffmann will play Kathleen McCormick, a seasoned FDNY firefighter and activist who is deeply affected by the ongoing deaths from 9/11.

Yang will play The Lost Son,” a young and mysterious homeless man who has experienced hardship at a young age.

From Paramount Television Studios and Sister, the new 6-episode limited series is written, directed and executive produced by Tobias Lindholm (The Investigation, A War) and written and executive produced by Frank Pugliese (House of Cards). Strong is also executive producer.

Huff is repped by Buchwald and Linden Entertainment. Hoffmann is repped by Ope Partners, Gersh and Peikoff Mahan. Yang is repped by Independent Talent Group, Range Media Partners, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.

Charlie isn’t just visiting Willy Wonka’s famed chocolate factory. He’ll also be in theaters worldwide next fall.

Netflix has announced that its upcoming animated feature “Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory,” which they recently previewed at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, will have a global theatrical release on Nov. 5, 2027, before arriving on the streaming platform on Dec. 22, 2027. (The Christmas-to-New Year’s period is Netflix’s most-watched corridor.) Sony Pictures Entertainment will handle international distribution for the global theatrical release.

Additionally, Netflix has announced the full voice cast for “Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory,” with Nicola Coughlan, Charithra Chandran, Samson Kayo, Christopher Chung, Kate Winslet and Helena Bonham Carter joining the previously announced Kit Connor (as the new Charlie) and Taika Waititi (as Willy Wonka).

This marks the second-biggest theatrical rollout for a Netflix project. Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” follow-up, “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew,” will be released in Imax and wide globally in theaters on Feb. 12, 2027, and on Netflix April 2, 2027. (There will be select Imax screenings on Feb. 10.) Meanwhile, David Fincher’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” follow-up, written by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt in the role that won him an Oscar, will have a two-week Imax run beginning Nov. 25 ahead of its Netflix debut Dec. 23.(Crucially, Brad Bird’s “Ray Gunn” will not be in theaters.)

Previously, things like the “Stranger Things” series finale and “KPop Demon Hunters” had limited theatrical engagements.

The official synopsis for “Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory” is as follows: “Willy Wonka (Waititi) has spent the years since the Golden Ticket contest behind bars (not the chocolate kind) for the crime of turning a child into a blueberry. Having served his time, Wonka returns to his factory determined to add a little sweetness to a bitter world. But one thing stands in his way: teenager Charlie Paley (Connor) and his friends. Facing eviction, this next generation of “rotten” kids plot to break into the factory, nab a priceless Wonka Bar, and save their homes. But like many before them who enter the fantastical world of the factory, these kids are in for a bit more than they can chew…”

“Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory” was directed by Jared Stern and Elaine Bogan and produced by Aron Warner and Timothy Yoo. Waititi serves as an executive producer.

Visit the chocolate factory in theaters on Nov. 5, 2027, and on Netflix Dec. 22, 2027.