Movie Review: Bridesmaids
Yes, I saw this the other night. To be honest, I was going to skip it. It really looked like a chick flick, which for the most part it was. However, just like with Your Highness, I heard very positive things about the film on the Howard Stern show, and I have to say I respect Howard’s opinion on most things. If you think he is nothing by crude, insensitive humor than it’s obvious you have never actually listened to his show. You really should give it a chance.
Anyway, the fact is I quite enjoyed Bridesmaids. It was really funny, well written, and accessible to Y chromosomes, although it was definitely chock-full-o-estrogen. It is the bastard love child of Thelma and Louise and the Hangover. I laughed my ass off continuously. It has it’s issues, like most movies do, but was overall very entertaining. (Baby Carlos image courtesy of the movie t shirts category)
Anyway, the movie. Kristin Wiig (from Paul) plays an out of luck loser and failed bakery owner who’s best friend gets engaged to some guy with a lot of money. She is drafted to be the main of honor and coordinate the bridesmaids, who don’t even know her. Meanwhile, Helen, one of the other bridesmaids, is a rich, perfect seeming bitch who wants to supplant her position as best friend and maid of honor. I don’t want to get too much into the story, but lest just say Wiig leads the bridal party from one disaster to another, most of which are her of own making. The rest of the bridesmaids appear to be as pathological as she is, in a mostly one dimensional stereotypical way. Meanwhile, her Porche driving booty call is a total a-hole (no surprise there). She meets a nice guy in the form of an Irish cop (Chris O’Dowd, from the IT Crowd, a nerd favorite) who she manages to wreck too. Wedding hijinks ensue. Wedding events get ruined, usually for crude humor reasons. There were a lot of laughs, although I feel like I missed a bunch of female specific humor. I know there were a few scenes that had me cringing while a lot of the women around me were laughing hysterically. Overall, however, a positive experience.
The stars. Kristin Wiig is great, both at an actor and comedian. She does great physical humor, and as the writer she really knew what situations would work really well for her acting style. Two stars. The movie was literally packed with laughs. You couldn’t go a full minute without laughing at something. Three stars. Melissa McCarthy was really funny as the unexpected supporting character. One star. Overall well written, although we can get into some of the writing issues later. Two stars. The evil Helen, played by Rose Byne, is super hot if you like tall, thin, waifish, elfin like women (which I do). One star. With the exception of Melissa McCarthy, the rest of the bridesmaids are pretty easy on the eyes (actually, in a surreal twist, all the bridesmaids except for McCarthy are more attractive than the bride (played by Maya Rudolph). She was hot, but the rest were hotter). One star. Wiigs super creepy British roommates were really funny and added a nice little subplot, although they were a little on the too surreal side for the tone of the movie. One star. Wiigs mother, the non-alcoholic alcoholic, was a good addition and help to add quite a bit to Wiigs character development. One star. It’s really nice to see a movie filled with actual talented comedians and people who have done stuff other than be pretty faces on a screen. One star. At the end of the movie you feel good. One star. Total: fourteen stars.
Now the black holes. The story arc (see how much like a grown up reviewer I have become? One day I hope to use the phrase “chewing the scenery”) seems a little flat. There is an obvious attempt to show some character development for Wiig, but it doesn’t really read so much like a journey as a series of discrete vignettes that happen to have the same characters in it (a little like a show that will go nameless but rhymes with Latter Day Fight Dive). One black hole. I am not really a fan of scatological humor, of which this film seems to make a lot of. One black hole. With the exception of McCarthy, almost all the supporting characters seemed really one dimensional and stereotypical. There was the a-hole boyfriend, the horny frustrated housewife, the naive recently married girl, the evil upper crust socialite, and the nice guy Prince Charming. It seemed like there was the possibility for some great secondary character development that never surfaced. Two black holes. The editing need to be more aggressive, I thought. There were a couple scenes that seemed to drag on forever (the airplane scene, for example) that could have been cut in half and still been as funny, if not funnier. One black hole. The story overall didn’t really have distinct acts. Instead it wandered from funny situation to funny situation National Lampoon’s Vacation style and then, all of a sudden, we’re at the finale, which was a little underwhelming. I know they got that from the Hangover, but honestly the events in that movie were better connected and made more sense. One black hole. While I found the movie overall really funny, the lack of a good male comedy character (ironically Chris O’Dowd was the straight man) left me, as a man (last time a checked), feeling a little alienated and disconnected. One black hole. Total: seven black holes.
So a total of seven stars, which seriously is about six more than I would have thought it would get when I saw the trailer (in actuality it would have gotten none, as my first thought when I saw the trailer was “pass”). The fact that it could rack up 14 stars says a lot, and if you aren’t of a mind to pick apart the script like I am you will probably enjoy the hell out of it. There is nothing here that really needs to be seen on a big screen, so it could easily wait for NetFlix or whatever. However, this is a great date movie, as you will not be bored while your date enjoys all the estrogen flowing off the screen and appreciating your open mindedness, so if you are a gentleman dating a lady (or, for that matter, a lesbian dating a lady or even a gay man etc) buy your tickets now. You should be able to milk the credit you get from watching this with her into seeing the new X-men with a minimum of argument.
That’s it. Big show coming up this weekend so I don’t know if I will be able to blog again before Sunday. Come check us out at KublaCon if you are in the Bay Area and want to play some games. I have an idea for a movie related blog I want to do about some favorite movies of mine, so I will let that idea brew in my brainstem.
Also, before I go this guy I know is working on an animation show and I thought I would toss him a nod. His cartoon is called Feckly, and he has been working on it a lot. This one cartoon is his proof of concept, which is why it seems a little dense. I think once they actually start working on the real cartoon the writing will smooth out and not have everything packed into two minutes. I think he’s got a good concept and wish him well on it. That’s it for now.
