Movie Review: Crude, Crass yet Completely Compassionate

Bridesmaids movie poster.  Image property of Universal Pictures.

Bridesmaids AWESOME!

I saw this movie twice.  That’s how much I loved it.  It is hilarious.

Saturday Night Live’s Kristen Wiig stars as Annie, a woman who has hit rock bottom.  Her latest business endeavor—a bakery called Cake Baby—has gone under, her boyfriend left her, her car is a piece of junk, she lives with weird roommates that she dislikes, and her current job was given to her as a favor to her mother.  She spends a lot of nights going over to Ted’s (Jon Hamm) house for booty calls, hoping a real relationship might arise from this.  Of course it won’t.

So in the midst of all this crappiness, her lifetime best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) has announced her engagement and wants Annie to be her maid of honor!  Annie accepts and is obviously very happy for her friend, but can’t help but feel a little envious of Lillian’s happiness.  Annie’s life just seems so much worse by comparison.  This feeling of inadequacy intensifies when she meets Lillian’s new friend and fellow bridesmaid Helen (Rose Byrne) who is rich, beautiful, classy and seemingly perfect in every way.  Annie can’t stand Helen, and feels like she is losing her best friend to her.

Needless to say, Annie makes a million mistakes while trying to plan this wedding.  She takes the girls to a seedy Brazilian restaurant where they all get food poisoning… She gets so drunk and disorderly on a plane that they get kicked off…  She goes berserk at the Bridal Shower and destroys everything…   Annie seems to be on a self-destructive path.  Not only is she destroying her friendship with Lillian, she’s also mucking up a potentially good relationship with a cop named Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd) who she met when he pulled her over.

In the end everything works itself out, and Annie’s character finally gets some closure.  She realizes that she needs to take responsibility for her own life, and this realization comes from the oddest bridesmaid, the round and ridiculous Megan (Melissa McCarthy).  In what is arguably the best scene in the movie, Megan comes over and tells her to stop moping.  She wrestles Annie onto the couch, hitting her while saying things like, “I’m your life, Annie.  I’m your life.  Fight back!”  Funny to watch, but what a revelation!  Once Annie finally fights Megan off of her, Megan simply says, “You are your own problem, Annie.  But you’re also your solution.”  Words can’t describe how much I loved that scene.

Bridesmaids, to me, is a perfect comedy.  Every good comedy has elements of drama, just like every good drama should have elements of comedy.  This comedy is laugh-out-loud funny and not afraid to “go there.”  There is plenty of raunchy, crude humor in the true Judd Apatow style (who produced it).  The audience was in fits of laughter throughout.  But like a lot of Apatow’s movies, there is a very sentimental backbone that really grounds all of the comedic elements.  Kristen Wiig was one of the screen writers (along with Annie Mumolo) and her background as a comedienne really shone through.  The script was so funny, fresh and real.  I would say it’s one of the best-written comedies in a really long time.

And boy oh boy did Kristen Wiig put in a star-making performance in Bridesmaids!  I promise you we will see her in more leading roles, because not only was her comedic timing spot on but she proved to be a very talented dramatic actor.  She's so likable on screen and her character was so relatable.  She was essentially everyone who has ever felt lonely; who has ever felt like a failure.  Her character learns a lot and grows a lot in this movie, and I just can’t find the words to express how fantastic her performance was.  It really, really was.

I think I'll go see it again.

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