Girls Trip (2017)
Directed by Malcolm D. Lee
Four girlfriends take a trip to New Orleans for an annual festival and, along the way, rediscover their wild sides and strengthen the bonds of sisterhood.
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What critics compared Girls Trip to
Think: Girls Trip , Bachelorette , or another Netflix release, Ibiza .
Hot on the heels of “Girls Trip” and “Rough Night” comes “Someone Great,” Netflix’s contribution to the “girls’ night out” genre.
Since then, female audiences haven’t had much to hang onto except for “Girls Trip” in 2017.
The highest compliment I can give Awkwafina is that her performance is akin to Tiffany Haddish’s in Girls Trip (sans the raunch).
The past five years or so have seen studios finally pulling their finger out when it comes to putting money behind movies with casts that are predominantly non-white and there has been a lot of focus on the success of movies with largely black casts — Black Panther , Girls Trip , Straight Outta Compton , etc. Crazy Rich Asians is a statement that diversity means a whole range of ethnicities and experiences, and everyone should be included.
Tinsel Town executives had their collective edges snatched by the $1 billion+ performance of Black Panther and $140 million+ showing of Girls Trip earlier this year, both led by majority Black casts.
And rapper Awkwafina gets the best lines and steals scenes in the same way that Tiffany Haddish did in Girls Trip.
While “ Bridesmaids ” and the “ Sex and the City ” franchise might have redefined such bosom-buddy bonding while trafficking in the usual raunchy, rude and rowdy behavior, “Girls Trip,” with its epic two-hour length, apparently aims to be the “Lord of the Rings” of sisters doing it for themselves, one that gets a whole lot right that the others too often get wrong.
Seven years ago, male and female critics alike got their claws out to destroy Sex and the City 2, a film which they suggested celebrated excess, debauchery, immorality, and all the qualities they had admired the Golden Globe-winning The Hangover for.
Like liberated “Sex and the City” types, these ladies represent different facets of the female experience, from divorced single mom Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith) to the aggressively sexual Dina (scene-stealing newcomer Tiffany Haddish ).
The story of four middle-aged female friends on a boozy, lecherous weekend in New Orleans, it pitches itself somewhere between Sex and the City and Bridesmaids, but provides neither the breezy insights of the former nor the ribald laughs of the latter.
Not likely to break any new ground like some of its R-rated peers such as “The Hangover,” “Bridesmaids” or “Girls Trip,” “Game Night” remains fresh simply for being a crude-yet-sweet mainstream comedy for the middle-aged crowd that doesn’t belittle their intelligence.
There are chuckles here and there, but a striking absence of belly laughs; Girls Trip it’s decidedly not.
Girls Trip and Rough Night are most analogous to The Hangover, but without the noir elements that Game Night is so influenced by.
These four ladies are on a Girls Trip.
But the real standout is Jesse Plemons in one of the best singular comic performances since Tiffany Haddish in "Girls Trip."
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But Kaling is underutilized, and scenes that feel like they should set up a coming-out party for Awkwafina, much like the way Tiffany Haddish broke out of last year’s “Girls Trip,” rarely materialize.