A Smarter, Funnier, Ultimately Not a Whole Lot Less Petty Sex and the City

Rating: 7/10 (14 October 2011)

I would say Kristen Wiig fixes a bawdy, plucky and boldly estrogen-soaked banner in the male-dominated raunch-comedy genre with this comedy from the Judd Apatow workshop that his fans have long been hoping for, were it not for that the dilemma at the center of the film is an earnest jealousy over who gets to plan a girlfriend's wedding and lose all self-control when you're not chosen to do so. It's not empowering in the way 9 to 5 or A League of Their Own are, but more like a smarter, funnier, ultimately not a whole lot less petty Sex and the City.
Wiig plays a has-been cupcake entrepreneur whose bakery went bust in the downturn and whose love life comprises ad hoc sex with her obnoxiously vain bed pal, in a hilarious turn by Jon Hamm. Indeed, Bridesmaids opens with one of Wiig and Hamm's vigorous sessions in bed, an unmistakable broadcast that this is a movie that doesn't want much to do with restraint like most chick flicks. When Wiig finds that her lifetime best friend Maya Rudolph is engaged, and that Wiig herself is to be maid of honor, the new reality propels her into a cave-in of resentment, unhappiness and self-pity. But when it's revealed that Rudolph's bridal party will also involve the moneyed, statuesque, impossibly proper Rose Byrne, Wiig's anxieties filter into extravagant circumstances of uncontrollable impulses. This New Money snob is plainly a challenger for Wiig's BFF position, a rallying call Wiig confronts with a swelling succession of ill-advised efforts at one-upswomanship, each bombardment including at least a couple of cup sizes full of explosive laughs.
As funny as these moments are, it's the smaller, more perceptive ones in this Apatow production that I hoped would make it worth appreciating, for director of Bridesmaids is Paul Feig, creator of Apatow's early call to arms for all his talented regulars, Freaks and Geeks, also both touching and hilarious. And indeed, an early scene here with Wiig and Rudolph, in which a chat effortlessly rolls from blowjobs to finely conveyed inside jokes, seizes the patterns and mutual implicit back story of friendship without a glitch. When Wiig meets a romantic-interest policeman named Rhodes, played expressively by Irish actor Chris O'Dowd, the sense is likewise discreet and credible. But this diverting but unfocused formula comedy, which gets this handful of qualities so spot-on, doesn't appear to grasp that it's wide of the mark for much of the remainder: It's content to indulge in graphic and humiliating inconsequentialities, and bashful about the material about which it should've been graphic and indulgent.
Wiig has the unaffected beauty and self-deprecating showmanship it takes to be a star comedienne. She so deftly manages both the laughs and the more tender frowny-faced side of Bridesmaids that the movie's supporting characters often don't have the opportunity to come into their own. Paul Thomas Anderson's talented consort Rudolph is too often demoted to judgmental on-looker of Wiig's behavior.
As two of Wiig's fellow dyed-to-complement entourage, Wendi McClendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper have virtually nothing to do, except one scene culminating in amusingly maudlin drunkenness. In fact, the one eponymous character who imperils to give Wiig a movie-stealing hustle for the envelope is the groom's husky sister Megan, played by an unvaryingly laugh-out-loud Melissa McCarthy.
It's an excessively manufactured hodgepodge, attempting too many comic ideas that ultimately drown the core theme of what a modern woman needs from friendship, love and marriage. If the movie was meant to be bolder, it definitely had a apt satirical foil at its center. The issue of overindulgence, which inculcate the series of extravagant parties in the long build-up to the overstated wedding that ends the movie is left virtually ignored. Never does Bridesmaids ever try for real biting stuff. So at the same time as it feels unreasonable to carp that Bridesmaids never comes together as a cutting satire of the demeaning protocol of getting married that it portrays, the existence of other comedies in Apatow's canon, perhaps especially Feig's work, which develop their character arcs into something more complete and poignant, prevails as an gauge of Bridesmaids' lack.