An Earnest Try by Talented Amateurs

Rating: 5/10 (14 May 2011)

This is a perfect example of a script that needed a couple more rewrites before they started to roll the cameras. There are several hilarious short sketches here: Annie's bizarre interaction with customers in the jewelry store where she briefly works, a group of young women becoming ill with food poisoning in an awesomely pretentious bridal boutique where they try on overpriced and awesomely hideous dresses, and a falling out between friends that disrupts a vulgarly overdone bridal shower. Plus, this should push the issue of making Casting a category at the Oscars: the young women are all delightful in their own ways, and casting Jill Clayburgh as Annie's mother is an act of genius.
The director should have watched some of the Marx Brothers movies, or those directed by Howard Hawks. They took off like racehorses and trusted the audience's intelligence to keep up. This needs at least thirty minutes cut out.
There seems to have been directed to be watched on TV. There are numerous spots where viewers could fold laundry, get a snack, go to the bathroom, whatever, and it's easy to see where the dead spots are coming. It's as if the director ran out of breath. And when you know when a pop song comes on the soundtrack the action is going to screech to a halt.
Also, this is proof of how unnecessary profanity is in films. At first there's the mild amusement, but too soon the ladies are turning the air blue: this has the unfortunate effect of making them sound as if they are women pushing forty who are still in the sixth grade.
Still, I'd recommend BRIDESMAIDS to anyone because the parts that do work are greatness. And the wedding dress the bride wears to the tastelessly overdone wedding- which she mentions to Annie in passing her father can't afford- is a hilarious sight gag, looking like canned whip cream which has been sprayed on the unfortunate bride and somehow turned to fabric. Bridesmaids' dresses are supposed to be hideous- it's traditional- but her outfit is something no woman would wear to a dog fight.