Not the movie the television ads set me up for....

Rating: 2/10 (16 May 2011)

Let me begin by saying that I'm a man and that I went to see this movie with my wife, not under duress, I was looking forward to seeing it. Let me add here that in an almost full theater I counted four other men in the audience which would lead me to believe that I was definitely not the target audience for this movie. That being said, my wife didn't like it either, she actually disliked it even more than I did.
All of the television promos I saw led me to believe that this was going to be a female version of "The Hangover", it wasn't, not even close. Which leads to my first problem with this movie, the advertising campaign was very deceiving. Pretty much all the funny scenes in the movie were included in the advertisements. What they didn't show was a very formulatic, been done a dozen times, chick flick about BFF's and wedding's gone wrong.
I will say that the funny parts of this movie, and they were few, were very funny; the scenes on the airplane were good, and when Annie was trying to get the cop to help her find Lillian. And...that was pretty much it, except for most of Melissa McCarthy's scenes with the exception of the one during the credit roll which was just kind of sick. The rest of the scenes that were meant to be funny either went on for much too long, were bizarre or crude instead of funny or were just strained. A good example of strained was the bridal party all dancing at the end of the movie, it didn't look natural or funny or like anything but a bunch of actors having been told to dance around and try to look like they were having fun, some, like Rudolf and Wiig very badly at that. If you have zero rhythm and can't dance, don't put a dance scene in your movie. One example of bizarre was two of the bridesmaids just deciding to make out on an airplane, for no discernible reason. Did Ms. Wiig think the guys in the audience would just enjoy seeing woman kiss?
The rest of the movie was an overlong, strained attempt to make a funny and touching movie all in one that failed at both. Some other major problems I saw; The scene near the beginning of the film in which Annie and Helen try to top one another at the announcement party went on and on and on way past the point where it was funny and to the point were it became tedious and even uncomfortable to watch. In fact many of the scenes in the movie were like that, they just didn't know where to stop.
Kristin Wiig's character, Annie, progressed in the movie from being likable and funny to just being stupid and annoying. The scenes were she sabotaged the wedding plans, either intentionally or unintentionally, also ran way too long and were sad and annoying instead of funny. Ms. Wiig needs to learn that sometimes, especially when the material is weak to begin with, less is more.
And while this may sound mean and petty I have to mention it because I kept noticing it over and over during the movie; Maya Rudolph is just not an attractive woman and was just wrong for her role in this movie. She was not believable at all, either as the bride to be or as the main characters best friend or as anything else. She is probably a fair sketch artist but she does not having the looks or the acting chops to carry a movie.
All in all a disappointment, firstly because we were snookered in by a misleading advertising campaign and secondly, because the movie tried to be two things at once and failed miserably at both.