Bridesmaids
Village East Cinemas, May 13, 2011
Movie #27 for 2011
I was always going to spend money on Bridesmaids - are you kidding? I was going to ride my high-horse all the way to the box office - but I didn’t actually have high expectations. Although I was keen to boost the box office takings of the girl-movie-underdog, I’m not a fan of the Apatow school (he produced the film) and broad, gross-out comedy isn’t really my thing.
When we meet Annie (KRISTEN WIIG, “SNL”, Knocked Up who also co-wrote), she is at bottom - she’s working in a job she doesn’t particularly like and is lonely after the business that she loved (a bakery that she co-ran with her now ex) goes under because of the recession. Her oldest friend Lillian (MAYA RUDOLPH, “SNL”, Away We Go, pictured with Wiig) is getting married, though, and they plan to plan the shebang together. Then Annie meets Lillian’s new friend Helen (ROSE BYRNE, Sunshine), which brings out the crazy in both of them and Annie discovers just how much more rock bottom there is.
The script and treatment is uneven - swinging from gross-out to heartfelt to hysterical tantrum drama to somewhere else again. What I found was some of what I was expecting to find - vomit and diarrhea humor - but there was something else as well - a touching and humane aspect to the comedy that is seldom seen.
The film is most successful when the story focuses in on the relationship between Annie and Lillian and the comedy revolves around Wiig and her natural, idiosyncratic and deeply funny delivery.
There is a significant amount of peripheral sub-story that could’ve been trimmed from the running time - at least two of the briesmaids and Annie’s mum didn’t need to be there - but the rest of the cast is solid and work with Wiig’s understated writing. In particular, JON HAMM (“Mad Men”, The Town) is an excellent asshole and CHRIS O’DOWD (“The IT crowd”) is a charming good guy.
I was always going to see Bridesmaids, I just didn’t expect to like it so much.
