Bridesmaids

I was never totally sold on this movie by the trailers. I thought they all sort of missed the mark. However, I think Kristin Wiig is a brilliant comic actress and Maya Rudolph and Melissa McCarthy are both great character actresses in search of a breakout. The reviews were pouring out adoration for the movie and producer and director team of Judd Apatow and Paul Feig was infinitely intriguing to me. I figured the trailers just had to be a very tame version of this R-Rated comedy. It was being mentioned as a female Hangover, of a female version of a Judd Apatow movie and who would not want to see that movie? I was excited at the prospect of all of these women coming together and creating something hilarious. After missing it opening weekend, I heard even more raves from co-workers and the general public coming out of the movie wiping away tears from laughing so hard.

Annie's(Wiig) life is not going exactly how she pictured. She is having sex with a guy who can barely stand her (he does not appear to be very good at sex either), her baking business went under and she is paying bills by selling jewelry. She has awful roommates and her only other living option is to live with her mother who goes to AA even though she has never had a drink. To top it off, her best childhood friend, Lillian(Rudolph) just got engaged and asked her to be the maid of honor. While Annie is excited for Lillian it only magnifies how off track her life is. It does not help that Lillian's life is easy street and Lillian has a friend, Helen (Rose Byrne) who has a ridiculous amount of money, is gorgeous and undermines all of Annie's ideas for the wedding party. The rest of the Bridesmaids also have their own ideas of what the bachelorette party and wedding shower should look like, and it is up to Annie to try and juggle it all.

Bridesmaids was so unbelievably disappointing. I laughed a lot in the first 25 or 30 minutes and then had a few sporadic laughs after that, but I found that most of the movie missed the mark. People around me seemed to be having a good time, but I was fidgety, bored and ready for the whole thing to be over long before its bloated 2hr run time was over. Wiig is a wonderful comic actress and she even handled the dramatic moments very well, but I am not sure this movie is worthy of her talents, or maybe I think she is meant to be a character comic actress, not a leading woman. All of the other actresses were fine too. Byrne did not drag the picture down even though she has nowhere near the comic background many of these women have and Melissa McCarthy was probably the only one who managed to be funny throughout, even though I did not get most of what everyone else was laughing at.

Also, Bridesmaids is more than a little bit depressing. I get that desperation and awkwardness make for humor all of the time, but this was just tough to watch at times. There is a scene where Annie and Helen go back and forth trying to outdo each other with speeches about Lillian and many people were laughing, but I was just left cringing because it reeked of depression from Annie. She knows her life sucks and that she may be losing her best friend and it was difficult to laugh at the pain. I like my raunchy comedies to get serious and not be afraid of emotion, but the general tone of this movie was to laugh at this woman's life spin so far out of control she has to move in with her mother. Of course, the character of Annie is not inherently likable either. There is this great cop character, Officer Rhodes(Chris O'Dowd) and Annie does everything she can to sabotage the possibility at happiness. It gets old pretty fast.

I have received the remark that I did not enjoy this movie because I have something against women who act the way we expect men to act in movies. This is false. Fart, poop and vomit jokes are not funny to me no matter who is farting, vomiting or pooping. The big gross out scene in this movie may make a lot of people laugh, but I was just left sitting there. I wanted so very much to be left with tears of laughter. I wanted my gut to hurt from laughing and instead I was just left wondering how much longer I had to sit and wait for the inevitable conclusion. I did laugh at the sex jokes. I actually appreciated jokes with women talking about sex, but not in that Sex and the City way. I really did want to love Bridesmaids, but it just did not go that way for me. I wish I could say there is a good movie somewhere in this mess, but I just do not think there is.