(Pretty strong argument for never ever becoming the bride, eh?)
CAST: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O‘Dowd, Ellie Kemper, Wendi McClendon-Covey,
DIRECTOR: Paul Feig
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and five outta control bridesmaids - straight ahead…
Know that saying “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride”? Well, if our next review is any indication, that doesn’t really seem like such a bad thing. Our movie is called BRIDESMAIDS, and it’s been a long time coming. Basically, it’s an irreverent, tart, and raunchy take on the whole wedding planning process which was treated with such respect and delicacy in rom-coms like MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING, BRIDE WARS, 27 DRESSES, FATHER OF THE BRIDE, THE WEDDING PLANNER, THE WEDDING DATE, A WEDDING, MONSOON WEDDING, MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, etc., etc., etc., etc…..
What sets BRIDESMAIDS apart from all the other flicks above? Well, let me ask you this: how many of the aforementioned movies features a bride shitting her pants from food poisoning during a bridal fitting? I’ll let you folks ponder that shit while I run off and have a quickie with my flavor of the month….
…..okay, I’m back and puffing on a ciggy. Now, I ask you again which of the previously mentioned titles shows any of the following: (1) a bride squatting in the middle of the street and crapping herself while wearing acres and acres of lace and taffeta, (2) a bridesmaid puking in the toilet of the atelier (fashion house), (3) another bridesmaid puking on top of the other bridesmaid’s head because she can’t hold it in anymore, or (4) yet another bridesmaid using a sink as a, well, crapper?
None of them. That’s how many. Basically, BRIDESMAIDS is the kind of movie you’d get if you took MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING and let it breed with THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. The resulting offspring would be the movie that we are about to review.
Basically, the set-up is fairly standard: Lillian (Maya Rudolph) and Annie (Kristen Wiig) are best friends. Lillian is getting married, which Annie reacts with a mixture of joy and dismay over, mainly because: (1) she’s joyous that her best pal will finally be hitched, and (2) she’s dismayed because she has yet to find such a sucker. The dismay part grows even further when Annie meets Helen (Rose Byrne), a chick so hot that she could make straight women and gay men pledge loyalty to the V. And I don’t mean “victory“. Helen is smart, rich, gorgeous - and is intent on planning Lillian’s wedding down to the last minute detail. Did I mention she’s also a bit of a controlling biyatch? No? Well, she is.
Fortunately, there are three other bridesmaids to sweeten the pot and they are: (1) Rita (Wendi McLendon Covey), a housewife who is just aching for that bachelorette party; (2) Becca (Ellie Kemper), a newly-wed who views any single chick like a total sympathy case; and (3) Megan (Melissa McCarthy), a butch chick partial to cullottes and manly shirts whom you’d instantly peg to be a lesbian - except for the fact that she is forever talking about dick and conquering it. Talk about mixed signals.
At any rate, our lovely sextet of bridal chicks embark on that hellish path called “wedding planning” which involves: (1) getting food poisoning from a Brazilian restaurant that Annie insists they go to; (2) dumping their innards out at the subsequent bridal fitting which doesn’t exactly please the snooty proprietors; and (3) ruining their Vegas-planned bachelorette party when Annie gets drunk on scotch and high on Xanax on the plane, pissing off an Air Marshal that Megan was totally macking on (don’t ask).
So… in other words, not exactly the most uneventful bachelorette party. Or would-be bachelorette party, that is. It doesn’t help that Annie herself pretty much caused all the above incidents to happen, which really pisses off Lillian. After all, how would you want to be remembered at the fashion house you bought your wedding dress from. I certainly wouldn’t want to be referred to as “The Bride Who Had The Brazilian Barbeque Splatters”.
Will Annie and Lillian’s friendship be saved? Or will Helen become Lillian’s new BFF? What other disasters are waiting in the wings for our bridal chicks? And will Annie be able to turn it all around? What happens when she meets a hot Irish (don’t ask) state trooper named Rhodes? Will he be the beacon she needs to finally get her act together? Or will she give him food poisoning, too?
Tune in and see. Just don’t blame me if you decide to get your girlfriends together and have a bachelorette party - even if nobody is getting married.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: In our last review for HORRIBLE BOSSES, I drew a distinction between that film and last year’s mega-hit THE HANGOVER. The former while certainly funny and amusing, also sported a premise so implausible that it prevented the film from reach truly hilarious heights. The latter, on the other hand, had a hook that was completely believable, allowing us to exist in the moment with the characters - making the humor more than just hilarious. It became timeless. And there’s a difference between a timeless comedy and a merely funny one.
Further proof of that distinction arrives with our next review, the timelessly hilarious BRIDESMAIDS. The reason this movie works so well is because, just like THE HANGOVER and unlike HORRIBLE BOSSES, the central premise is a believable one: the infighting between a group of bridesmaids and the ensuing comic results. BRIDESMAIDS also has the distinction of being a wedding comedy where the central relationship is between two girlfriends. While there is a male lead in Chris O’Dowd’s Irish cop, the emphasis is on the friendship between Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig’s character.
By anchoring the comedy in believably human relationships and situations, the humor rings true and is never unbelievably outlandish. My issue with HORRIBLE BOSSES is that, while funny, the heroes decide to kill off their bosses far too quickly. As a result, you don’t embrace the ensuing hijinks as thoroughly. With BRIDESMAIDS, on the other hand, that isn’t the case. This is one hilarious movie.
However, the characters and the actors playing them deserve just as much credit as the plausible plot. Kristen Wiig turns Annie into a refreshingly imperfect, yet still lovely, heroine. Unlike the “perfect women” leads of other wedding romantic comedies, she and Maya Rudolph as Lillian make for relatable leads. These aren’t flawless supermodels but real women.
Rose Byrne as Helen is one woman who could be a flawless supermodel, but her cool, perfect beauty is used against type here. Instead, she is portrayed as the predatory and duplicitous one of the group. But you don’t cast Rose Byrne in a movie without using those sensitively gorgeous eyes and, sure enough, when Helen “turns good” later in the film, Byrne uses those unforgettable peepers of her to great effect. I would marry this chick in a heartbeat. And anyone who knows me knows I’m allergic to marriage.
Ellie Kemper and Wendi McLendon-Covey provide warm and solid support as Becca and Rita, two of the other bridesmaids. But it is Melissa McCarthy as the hilarious and surprisingly wise Megan who steals the show. McCarthy shapes Megan into an instantly iconic comedy character. Megan is someone who clearly doesn’t belong in one niche. Instead, she has layers that keep surprising us. Brash, funny, raunchy, irreverent, but also unswervingly loyal and generous, Megan ends up being Annie’s saving grace. The best scene in the whole film is when Megan visits Annie at home and talk some sense into her. Oh, and watch for the end credits. You’ll see.
Chris O’Dowd matches Kristen Wiig in the “lovely-but-not-perfect” department as Rhodes, the Irish cop who finds himself drawn to Annie. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to see a comedy where the male and female lead are not sleek, perfect, and blindingly gorgeous. These two are definitely attractive and great to look at, but in a way that is not unapproachable. Let’s hope for more of this “against-type” casting.
In the end, BRIDESMAIDS stands well apart from the pack of wedding-themed rom-coms with its down-to-earth approach to its characters and situations, as well as an emphasis on the various relationships and quirks of the people that push the plot forward.
Like THE HANGOVER, it’s an instant modern classic…
