Less Funny than Sad

Rating: Null/10 (22 September 2011)

BRIDESMAIDS is not a film this viewer would normally have watched, but in a week where there is very little else available On Demand on television, the button parked here. In many ways the film was a surprise, actually better than expected. The promo for the film was that it was a female version of HANGOVER or BORAT, an attempt to demonstrate to guys that women can be just as gross and vulgar as men. But actually the story is more a tale of a group of sad women, unhappy in many ways with their relationships with not only men but also with other women. Written by star Kristen Wigg and Annie Mumolo and directed by Paul Feig it is a pulled together series of vignettes about women in distress, and while it does include the gross-out promises of PR (barf/flatulence/body insert references) and the manner in which women in competition behave, it still remains a story of how sad people cope.
Annie (Kristin Wiig) is a barely employed woman who has lost her dream of having her own bakery and having a meaningless physical relationship with cad Ted (Jon Hamm) relies on her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) to get through life, until Lillian announces she is getting married and asks Annie to be her Maid of Honor. Even though Annie is broke, living with a disgusting British brother and sister as a roomer, she accepts the responsibilities. The sparkle of the wedding dream plans fizzles when Annie meets the incongruous group of women who will be bridesmaids: the wealthy, haughty Helen (Rose Byrne), the obese socially gross Megan (Melissa McCarthy), the oversexed inappropriate mother Rita (Wendi McLendon McCarthy) and the silly insubstantial Becca (Ellie Kemper). In a series of gag moments - eating in a Brazilian café, trying on dresses, a grossly overdone flight in the direction of Las Vegas, and a preposterous wedding shower - the girls fall apart as potential friends only, of course, to some together in the end.
There are a few redeeming elements in the film that are worthy of attention - the Irish police officer Nathan Rhodes a sparkling Chris O'Dowd) who provides the only semblance of true sentiment in Annie's ridiculous life and Annie's mother played by Jill Clayburgh in what was to be her last role (she died of Leukemia seen after the film was completed). Kristin Wiig does carry the film, despite the fact that her expressions and character show minimal variation as the story plods along. But in the end, despite all the attempts to out-gross HANGOVER, this is a sad little film about bruised women and how their interdependence provides a way out of the meaningless lives they lead.
Grady Harp