Bridesmaids (2011)
Directed by Paul Feig
Annie's life is a mess. But when she finds out her lifetime best friend is engaged, she simply must serve as Lillian's maid of honor. Though lovelorn and broke, Annie bluffs her way through the expensive and bizarre rituals. With one chance to get it perfect, she’ll show Lillian and her bridesmaids just how far you’ll go for someone you love.
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What critics say influenced Bridesmaids
Melissa McCarthy as Megan: If you compare Megan to Alan (Zach Galifianakis) in The Hangover, then you're just being lazy.
Indeed, the only title character who threatens to give Wiig a scene-stealing shove for the bouquet is the groom’s gruff-voiced sister, Megan, played by Melissa McCar-thy in a swaggering, goofily weird turn reminiscent of Zach Galifianakis in "The Hangover.”
In the lead-up to the film’s release, there were rumblings that Bridesmaids was a straight rip-off of The Hangover , in which a male wedding party bonds over roofies, tasers and Tyson.
Yes, "Bridesmaids" is pretty much a rip-off of "The Hangover" with a genitals swap-out.
Paul Feig is the director, but what makes Bridesmaids so striking is the near-absence of male figures, so that it becomes almost a mirror image of The Hangover.
Make no mistake, this is not another screechy, shallow, smug, hair-brainedfor lack of a better term"chick flick" like 2007's insufferable " License to Wed " or 2009's equally detestable " Bride Wars ," nor is it a female version of 2009's overrated, mean-spirited " The Hangover ," as so many are already labeling it as.
That said, I'm glad no one axed Rebel Wilson and Matt Lucas as Annie's strange British housemates - or Melissa McCarthy as Lillian's sister-in-law-to-be, a tough-talking oddball who suggests a Fight Club party theme.
As Annie's fellow bridesmaid, she never has a thought that's left unspoken, and she has a great idea for a bridal-shower theme ("Fight Club," anyone?).
So off, in fact, that McCarthy -- known mainly from her work on shows such as "Gilmore Girls," and, more recently, CBS' "Mike & Molly" -- was a little worried about reading for the part of Megan, the nuclear engineer in "Bridesmaids" who steals puppies, has no inside voice and thinks "Fight Club" would make a totally solid theme for a bridal shower.
Before we get to Annie’s extended existential crisis, however, let’s pause long enough to contemplate the possibility of a Fight Club-themed bridal shower where guests win prizes for guessing the bride’s weight.
I was going to say that, with its zingers and cattiness, the film Bridesmaids reminded me of most was All About Eve (still the only picture ever to have gained four female acting nominations at the Oscars), but even Bette Davis never did a poo in the street.
This being a romantic comedy (although in the tart manner of such Apatow productions as Forgetting Sarah Marshall ), predictability is part of the conceptual furniture.
So while any serious fan of comedy will know this is better than 27 Dresses, it may not be as heavily quoted as similarly effective flicks like Role Models, I Love You Man or Forgetting Sarah Marshall (did I just compose a Paul Rudd/Jason Segel Venn diagram?).
Not unlike Jason Segel 's yearning puppeteer in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," Wiig's character must find a way to get unstuck.
This typically awesome outing from uber-producer Judd Apatow continues his tradition of shepherding actor-written comedies (like Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall), a formula that rarely results in anything less than something special.
With the wisdom of a sage, he’s given comedienne Kristen Wiig a chance to develop her very own feature comedy that fits perfectly into the existing Apatow oeuvre that includes “Knocked Up,” “Superbad” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”
Though I can think of a handful of Apatow-produced movies I enjoyed more (“The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Superbad,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Get Him to the Greek”), “Bridesmaids” is likely to be one of the best comedies of the year.
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The buzz: Wiig co-wrote the script, so you know "Bridesmaids" is no "Bride Wars."
In a lesser movie this would turn into the kind of horror show we've already been subjected to by hateful, stupid, anti-woman movies like Bride Wars, but here it winds up a story about the shifting, changing nature of adult friendships, with a little help from raging tantrums thrown using props like giant heartshaped cookies and chocolate fondue fountains to get the point across.
Before ‘nam styles flashbacks of Bride Wars come flooding in, take solace in the knowledge that the war between Annie and Helen is mostly psychological in nature, and never outlandish.
Other movies have tried, but too often they end up like The Sweetest Thing, in which the script asked Christina Applegate and Cameron Diaz to dance for laughs by talking and acting like men.
For a while Hollywood has unsuccessfully tried to make a "guy" comedy with women (the justly-forgotten The Sweetest Thing, anyone?), but finally someone has gotten it right with this deceptively gentle-sounding title.
While the film has been shorthand-marketed as "The Hangover for girls," Nicole Holofcener's first film, Walking and Talking, is more Bridesmaids' thematic forebear; what surprises most is how Wiig, in a winning, vanity-free star turn, tweaks her signature deadpan delivery to get at very real, very raw emotions.
Where movies like “Knocked Up,’’ “Superbad,’’ and “Funny People’’ are obliquely about the love men have for each other, “Bridesmaids’’ openly, comfortably turns the stress of being girlfriends into comedy.
Like his largely unsuccessful 2009 film “Funny People” with Adam Sandler, the film drags a bit in places, and it could be shorter—running over 2 hours.
Beyond a doubt, there is room for improvement: in particular, one wishes the film had benefitted from a director with a firmer voice than Paul Feig, creator of Freaks and Geeks and veteran director of a number of top-notch television episodes who cannot quite manage the jump to features (his last theatrical project was the long-forgotten Unaccompanied Minors ); not because he's stuck in a TV aesthetic or that sort of thing (in fact, it's pleasant free of TV-sized cinematography and editing), but because, like so many filmmakers, he doesn't have a good grasp on pacing in a movie, and though it's not quite as gaspingly over-burdened as Apatow pictures like Knocked Up or Funny People , it still doesn't really fill up its 125 minutes, and one suspects that a bolder director might have informed his writer and lead that some of the subplots needed to be slice back a bit; I'd have started with the largely unlikable bit involving Annie's horrible British roommates, but there are quite a few bits that go on too long…
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From there on, Bridesmaids is pretty much a sinus-clearing remake of George Cukor's 1939 bitchfest The Women , minus the fascinators and handicapped mildly by the need to make its way, however unsteadily, toward a sunny ending.
And Jill Clayburgh, her too-brief life on earth now over, provides some scene-stealing moments of her own in her final film, as Annie’s mom, a devotee of the stars (Dolly Parton, Burt Reynolds) of distributor Universal’s 1982 feature “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”