Review: Bridesmaids

in

Bridesmaids

I'm resisting the very strong urge to write "OMG COMEDY WRITTEN BY SMART WOMEN GO PAY TO SEE IT THIS WEEKEND GO GO SO WE CAN HAVE MORE NOW NOW GO NOW." Let's face it -- we don't get many smart comedies written by women and starring women. Women are supposed to make do with comedies with a sexist and mean undertone, or ridiculously cliched melodramas, or those "women are all sisters" movies with bonding over shopping and/or Motown dancing scenes.

Bridesmaids has shopping and female friends being ridiculous and even wedding planning, all things that would normally have me running away as far as possible and begging someone else to please review the movie because I would rather clean the cat's butt than watch such a thing (unless it was made in the 1930s, but they understood wit back then). However, writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumalo have teamed up with director Paul Feig and producer Judd Apatow to bring us a comedy about women that is primarily meant to make us laugh, and secondarily meant to have strong and realistic female characters in it, and the result may not be perfect but it's damned refreshing.

Annie (Wiig) has lost her boyfriend and is making do with sex with one of the most obnoxious jerks in the world (Jon Hamm); she's also lost her bakery business and is making do with a menial job in a jewelry store for which she's entirely unsuited. She and her friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) sneak behind the bushes at a boot-camp workout class so they can attend without paying. When her friend Lillian breaks the news that she is finally marrying her longtime boyfriend, Annie hopes to be a wonderful friend and maid of honor, while realizing that she may be losing her best friend not only to marriage but to Lillian's new friend, the rich and practically perfect Helen (Rose Byrne).

The paragraph above doesn't sound very funny, but a solid dramatic foundation is a great basis for a comedy. The script doesn't treat Annie like a loser; she's an ordinary person with some terrible luck and worse choices. The things that happen to her in this movie are things that could happen to any of us, but dialed up a notch or two until they're funny. The opening sex scene is hilarious, but I've been there in real life and it's not funny. Annie's actions at the bridal shower are what none of us would ever do, but what some of us have certainly thought about. And I have been the poor bridesmaid who couldn't afford the fancy dress and the dyed shoes, although in my case I was way less shy about telling the bride this (my sister), which led to further embarrassment (my mom told me to hush and wrote me a check).

And that's the thing I finally realized, after wondering why the hell Annie doesn't tell the other bridesmaids and Lillian that she can't afford a plane trip to Vegas, or fancy shower gifts, or especially an $800 dress: She wants Lillian to have a perfect wedding almost as much as Lillian does. Despite Annie's problems with Helen, Bridesmaids is a movie about female friendship and what happens to it when circumstances change, whether it's marriage or careers or depressingly, increasing income gaps.

Some interesting class issues are underlying the story: Lillian and Annie both seem to be scraping by at the beginning of Bridesmaids, but Lillian's engagement seems to be not just about her relationship with her fiance but also an attempt to move herself into a wealthier circle of friends like Helen -- nearly all the other bridesmaids are lovely and thin and never seem to worry about money, and never talk about their jobs. The exception is the groom's sister Megan, played by Melissa McCarthy, who is not thin and has no filter between her brain and her mouth -- the bridesmaid written to provide continual comic interest, which McCarthy delivers admirably (stealing scenes in the process).

In a cast dominated by women -- I don't think the groom has more than two lines in the film -- Jon Hamm holds his own as the completely reprehensible guy Annie turns to for sex. But the real surprise in Bridesmaids is Chris O'Dowd as a Wisconsin policeman who could potentially be a romantic interest for Wiig's character. Forget about the fact that he's Irish and makes no attempt to hide the accent, but my primary exposure to O'Dowd has been as a geeky misfit on The IT Crowd, and you would never have convinced me that I could take him seriously as a romantic interest. Not to mention that he's six or seven years younger than Wiig (another refreshing change from most movies). But it works beautifully.

The humor veers into the raunchy at times, which I didn't find quite as amusing as the rest of the movie. I could have done without Wiig's difficulties on the plane (although I enjoyed watching her seatmate, whom I later learned was co-writer Mumalo). And then there's the scene with all the vomiting and poop, which I normally don't find funny at all. On the other hand, I take a certain pleasure in movies where women characters are involved in gross bodily function humor, like the bathroom scene in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Lots of guys out there appear to believe that beautiful women don't ever fart or poop, so I kind of like seeing the occasional (very occasional please) movie where they do. Also, it was a nice change from the usual dress-shopping scenes in movies featuring women.

And speaking of Harold and Kumar, am I the only one to notice that the musical joke at the end of Bridesmaids is a riff on a similar joke in that film? Admittedly I watch Harold and Kumar annually so I may be overly sensitive to this kind of thing. Bridesmaids could also have used a tighter edit -- I didn't notice the long running time but there were some lags here and there that could have been shortened, and a few lacks of follow-up made me wonder if the movie had originally been an even longer cut. And some of the gags were almost shameless in their desire to grab a laugh, like some sight gags involving adorable puppies.

Bridesmaids is by no means an ideal comedy, or the best movie of the year, but it's funny and the female characters don't make me wince. I'm tired of comedies written by men who don't seem to think women are funny (the aforementioned Mr. Apatow) or "chick flicks" that are, as Lindy West brilliantly wrote last year about Sex in the City 2, "gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls." The women in this movie are over 30, very rarely mention their weight, don't aspire to fancy red-soled high-heel shoes, and are -- well -- people. For that, I am pathetically grateful.

Not quite Austin connections: Bridesmaids first premiered as a rough cut at SXSW this year. In addition, Mike Judge fans might be amused to learn that this movie reunites Terry Crews -- who has an all-too-short scene as a boot-camp class instructor -- and Maya Rudolph, last seen together in the Austin-shot Idiocracy. (And Judge's follow-up film, Extract, co-starred Kristen Wiig. I can do this all day, folks.)