Ordinary chick-flick with enough gross-out humor to keep guys in their seats

Rating: Null/10 (15 September 2012)

Bridesmaids was a huge hit with both critics and audiences because it successfully combined what women think is funny with what men think is funny.
Women think relationships are funny, whether the relationships are with men, other women, children, pets, cars, jobs (more or less in that order) ... with anything, in other words, as long as the humor gently points out how exasperating but challenging and potentially rewarding it is to try to relate to other creatures, animate or inanimate. In sharp contrast, men don't think anything is funny except doing in public what normal people do only alone in the bathroom with the door locked. Bridesmaids' considerable achievement is combining those two seemingly incompatible elements seamlessly into one coherent movie.
As a gay man, I most enjoyed the relationship humor, but as a man, I laughed out loud (and I really couldn't help it, because I tried) ONLY at the scene where all the women suffer food poisoning in the high-class, by-appointment-only, white-carpeted bridal shop - especially Melissa McCarthy perched on the sink.
I think I can safely say that every single male human being who saw this movie laughed out loud at that scene; and many of the straight men afterward congratulated themselves, astonished that they were able to enjoy a chick-flick. That's because THIS otherwise ordinary chick-flick was peppered with enough guy gross-out humor to keep them from fidgeting, but not with so much that it turned women off. It's still 80% orthodox chick-flick, but 20% farting, vomiting and explosive diarrhea is enough to keep most men satisfied.