Good thing cops like pastry

Rating: 7/10 (7 October 2011)

Annie's (Kristen Wiig) life spirals into chaos through a cascade of events spurred by the announcement that her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is to get married and she is to be her maid of honour. After failed business investments and a love-life in self-inflicted permanent hell (punctuated by masochistic nights spent with her egocentric prick sex buddy) she seems to have already hit bottom. Only to be proved entirely wrong, when Lillian's work associate, the sumptuous Whitney (Jessica St. Clair), collides head on with Annie in trying to fulfil the bridesmaids honours. The remainder of Lillian's ragtag team of the Brides little helpers is made up of foul-mouthing mom of three rascals Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey), goodie-two-shoes Becca (Ellie Kemper) and tomboy Megan (Melissa Mccarthy), the movies very successful response to Alan from "Hangover". The entourage is however secondary, as the movie really and truly focuses on Annie and her debacles with only limited time offered to the supporting cast.
As chaos reigns laughter ensues. Sometimes in droves, but more often with a little smirk of enjoyment. The movie in the end does turn out to be a bundle of fun, but it does have a very weird mix of conversation based humour, subtle absurdities and situational comedy with immature fart and anal jokes coupled with people thinking that swearing equals being funny (both these points punctuated by the appearance of Matt Lucas of Little England ignominy). In the end not everything works in this slightly chaotic comedy unsure of which direction to best take. Add to that some some of the key jokes in the movie just dragged on beyond their expiry date replacing a good laugh with an internal suggestion for the editor to recut the movie. But after an uneven start our girls in pink really get going and break inhibitions to force out a tirade of laughter. The dramatic side of the story is also very well written, so you feel strongly drawn to sympathise with Annie, whilst simultaneously screaming at the screen for her being such an emotional moron. However irritating she is as a person, you somehow end up gunning for her and happy she found a pastry munching Irish cop to get romantically involver with..
The ending left me slightly disappointed. Rushed and lacking the warmth of the build-up it really would have done better with some more minutes to prepare for the big resolution.
Definitely up there with recent comedies such as "Role Models" or "Hangover", but for brief issues with pacing and bad jokes. The movie also feels way too engineered and sincere for its own good. Being the response to "Hangover" doesn't help it one bit in this regard.