Bridesmaids (2011) Reviews

Bridesmaids, competition between the maid of honor and a bridesmaid, over who is the bride's best friend.

The movie is about a woman (Maya Rudolph) who's about to marry, and asks her best friend since childhood, Annie (Kristen Wiig), to be her maid of honour. Approximately two hours of film, one go through various pre-wedding rituals — engagement party, dress fitting, bridal shower, hen-party trip to Las Vegas — which are meant to be funny because Annie's life is falling apart and a richer, more beautiful bridesmaid (Rose Byrne) is trying to usurp her position as the bride's best friend.

During the course of the film, Annie has to figure out what is wrong with her and why she is not successful in keeping up with relationships.

You know, much has been made about one scene in a film that’s mostly about friendship, trying to regain your emotional and financial footing, and that awkward phase of your life called adulthood. Do I really need to mention the scene I’m talking about? It seems to be all anyone ever focuses on. But the gross-out gag in the middle of the film feels like it was shoved in to appeal to the boyfriends in the audience. What I took away was that a sharply written, well-acted ensemble comedy aimed at adults is far more enjoyable than the juvenilia ‘comedic’ stuff ground-out on a mass scale.

And let’s not forget the other half of that ‘comedic’ coin – movies which star people like Katharine Heigl as shrill, joyless harpies who need to find the perfectly uncouth but model-pretty male in their lives so they can lighten up and stop being so tortured in their ridiculously nice apartments and cushiony jobs in which they perform no actual work. These movies are acid on my soul. So it was with a great sigh of relief that I can admit that Bridesmaids greatly avoids all of these annoying clichés and tropes.

Sure, the film’s not perfect – tone and keeping a sense of pace and energy get lost towards the middle and end – but it does so much right that it’s easy to forgive its failures. While it doesn’t stray too much from the Apatow-formula, he is onboard as a producer here, it does dive into waters such as how we live, and how there’s an element of jealousy, envy, and thinly veiled contempt in how we interact with each other, even with the people that we love.

Bridesmaids focuses mostly on Annie (Kristen Wiig), Lillian (Maya Rudolph) and Helen (Rose Byrne). Sure, there’s a group of supporting players who are without a doubt a group of bridesmaids, but the complicated relationships between these three women is the true heart of the film. Annie and Lillian have been friends most of their lives, and success, happiness, stable relationships, and a smooth transition into adulthood have seemingly been blessed upon Lillian. Annie isn’t a bad person, but she’s going through several personal issues and this may have just become the very thing that tips her into self-absorbed hatred and vitriol.

That the film doesn’t ask us to love her constantly is refreshing. She has more than her fair share of panic stricken breakdowns and the garden variety neurosis of most people in the middle class. That Wiig nails the comedic moments should come as no surprise, but it’s the vulnerability and sensitivity in her performance that proves she may be that rare comic personality who can really act.

She’s offered wonderful support from Byrne’s rich-bitch who over the course of the movie goes from the object of Annie’s scorn to a flesh-and-blood character, Ellie Kemper doing a variation of her character from The Office, Wendi McLendon-Covey as an exasperated mother of three, and Maya Rudolph as the bride-to-be who appears to both truly love Annie and continue to be her friend only because of obligation. The best performance, in the entire film, belongs to Melissa McCarthy as Megan. Her performance both lacks vanity and has no judgment or hesitation in any of the insane, vulgar, hilarious, or awkward things she has to say and do. She’s an oddball character, but she’s also the most content, confident, and empathetic character in the whole lot. Her scene with Wiig late in the film is great because here is a character that should be angry and bitter with the world, but she’s there to offer words of advice and endearing tells Wiig to get her act together. It’s this note of humanity that truly sticks long after Bridesmaids has ended.

In all honesty, there are males out there who are going to immediately presume that Bridesmaids is going to be just another chick flick that we’ve seen year after year, as it appears to have familiar concepts like we have seen in the TV series of Sex And The City and the two feature films due to the relationships and social behaviour between female friends and relatives. However, Bridesmaids became a rather unexpected surprise and somehow miraculously surpassed its chick flick outlook and turned into an absolutely hilarious comedy that is suitable for males as well as females.


Having said that the plot of the film is very basic and is rather short and sweet, Bridesmaids lasts approximately 2 hours and it is neither rushed nor incredibly slow. It has the ability to fit in the time to understand the characters and it manages to turn itself inside out, so to speak, as the comedy within dominantly surpasses the soppy girly story. The style of humour in Bridesmaids has familiar concepts to 2009 hit comedy The Hangover due to the combination of running gags and hilarious and awkward situations on a life-changing adventure. In fact, Bridesmaids is just like The Hangover but with females.


Being the guy who went on to produce (and occasionally direct and write) some of the most popular comedies of this generation but has received either mixed or a negative overall critical response, Judd Apatow has made a name for himself and has been part of a few successful comedies (e.g. Superbad, Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy), but his latest hit Bridesmaids is quite possibly the finest film that he has ever done. As for director Paul Fieg, who has only directed episodes from television shows directs only his second film and although his previous and debut feature: Unaccompanied Minors did not gain widespread acclaim let alone hardly any recognition at all, he goes on to make his breakthrough with Bridesmaids.


Kristen Wiig has made frequent cameo and supporting appearances in films produced by Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), and she takes not only the leading role in Bridesmaids, but also serves as co-writer (her first script) alongside other screenwriter and actress Annie Mumolo who appeared in the film too. Wiig gives a performance to remember as Annie, the young woman who is almost completely alone and perhaps feels she needs to be this maid of honour in order to make something out of her life. Wiig provides a rather bitter yet absolutely hilarious and rather sexy approach to Annie’s character and as result; she deserves her Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy.


Especially when it involves Annie, the film consists of typical issues from the average chick flick like jealousy, insecurities, narcissism, cat fights, self-doubt, self-pity, self-destruction that we generally see in real-life between young women. Helen is an almost perfect enemy for Annie in this case. Rose Byrne, who had already starred in James Wan’s latest horror film Insidious and X-Men prequel X-Men: First Class, Byrne’s performance as Helen is entirely different but it was very good as there are so many hilarious yet rather serious sparks between herself and Annie. Melissa McCarthy gives without a doubt the funniest performance of the film as Megan who is a rather similiar character to Alan Garner, portrayed by Zach Galifianakis, in The Hangover and it’s sequel. Wendy McLendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper are added to the mix and make the female wolf-pack even funnier, and expect a nice surprise appearance from British comedian and actor Matt Lucas.


Overall, Bridesmaids is one of the most surprisingly brilliant films that don’t often come our way very often. This is not a chick flick, it’s an adventure comedy that goes through experiences of priceless disastrous events and use of vulgar language and humour, but it also has a heart that will move its audiences. It rightfully deserves a Best Picture - Musical/Comedy nomination at the Golden Globes and it makes its mark as Judd Apatow’s greatest comedy to date and one of the most entertaining films of 2011.

What a mess. Totally awful, terrible, bad writing for the most part. The main characters had awful lines, the whole thing was 100% utterly predictable, and the smaller characters (Megan, Ted), had MUCH better lines/parts. I had expected good things out of this film, after hearing so many good reviews, but not even 10 minutes into it, we were considering shutting it off and watching "The Hangover" (which was watched afterward, to clear our heads of the trash we had just finished watching).

Maya Rudolph is not a good actress, Kristen Wiig is just annoying in her role, and even the smaller roles that are better written and played by big names/familiar faces, do NOT in any way save this film. Melissa McCarthy does a fantastic job with her role, and Jon Hamm is also pretty good. Chris O'Dowd, I did like, but again, a smaller part and the main character's love interest. The random, and few, funny bits of this movie were mostly funny an in awkward-I-can't-believe-they-just-did-that fashion.

Really, no one should waste their time watching this. Just watch "The Hangover" if you want a good pre-wedding comedy. "Bridesmaids" doesn't come close to being even a fraction as good. And yet, it was called the female version of "The Hangover"?? On what planet would this ever be true? The two are nothing alike, and "Bridesmaids" really just spends a lot of time slamming men and their sex organs, and making women look like crazy bitches.

"You're like the maid of dishonour..."

Bridesmaids is another R-rated summer comedy from the Judd Apatow humour factory. However, this is not your typical Apatow outing populated by males and sex jokes - instead, Bridesmaids is mostly concerned with females. Do not, however, mistake this for another superficial, harebrained chick flick like Bride Wars or Sex and the City, nor is it simply a female version of The Hangover. Bridesmaids is its own movie with its own identity - it's a poignant comedy-drama exploring tumultuous female relationships and the disenchantment of middle age. The film tells a heartfelt tale which feels real and focuses on a handful of well-developed, three-dimensional female characters. And it's also genuinely hilarious. In this sense, Bridesmaids is the antithesis of the onslaught of amazingly stupid chick flicks featuring the likes of Katherine Heigl and Kate Hudson.

Annie (Wiig) is in her 30s, stuck in a nowhere relationship with a prick (Hamm), and has worked a lowly job at a jewellery store ever since her beloved bakery went out of business. When her lifelong best friend Lillian (Rudolph) announces her engagement and impending marriage, Annie is given the maid of honour responsibilities, much to her excitement. However, as she begins organising events leading up to the big day, Annie finds herself threatened by the sophisticated, rich Helen (Byrne), who begins assuming control of everything and trespassing on Annie's turf as Lillian's best friend.

Bridesmaids is an unapologetically R-rated comedy (unsurprising for a Judd Apatow production), but not in the sense that it's packed with excessive language or gross-out gags which push the boundaries of bad taste. Instead, writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo used the freedom of the R rating to pen an uncompromising, honest script which treats the story and characters with the realism and care that they demand. A lot of mainstream comedies reduce female characters to materialistic shopaholics or quirky supporting characters, but Bridesmaids explores the deeper facets of real-world females. In the real world, women don't merely cry a lot and shop compulsively - the gender has its own voice and humorous sensibility, and the film brings this out. One of the biggest successes of the script is how well-written the characters are, from the flawed and troubled Annie to the hilariously eccentric Megan. Helen could have easily been written as materialistic and shallow, but the role has genuine depth which is gradually revealed as the film progresses.

Director Paul Feig's last feature film was 2006's Unaccompanied Minors, after which he worked a lot in TV (including the American version of The Office). Despite being Feig's first feature in five years, Bridesmaids is a skilfully-made picture, and it's clear that Feig has a firm grasp of comic timing. Additionally, the film for the most part flows at an agreeable, brisk pace. However, like other Apatow pictures, Bridesmaids runs over two hours, which is about 15-20 minutes too long. A comedy like this requires more focus and tighter editing, but instead the film meanders here and there. It doesn't drag too much, but as a whole the picture feels too long in the tooth, especially since the laughs become too scattershot in the final half-hour.

Let's not mince words here - the underrated Kristen Wiig is brilliant as Annie; she's appealing, relatable, hilariously unrestrained and at times genuinely touching. Wiig has bounced around the sidelines of comedies for years and has always shined (see Whip It, MacGruber and Paul, just to name a few), so it's fantastic to see her finally getting the lead role in her own film. Bridesmaids may contain a sizable ensemble of excellent female performers, but this is Wiig's film. Speaking of her co-stars, Wiig's interactions with Rose Byrne are often hilarious, and the two play off one another perfectly. Maya Rudolph (Wiig's co-star in 2010's MacGruber) is friends with Wiig in real life, and their genuine friendship has translated to a terrific on-screen chemistry. Another standout in the cast is the hilarious Melissa McCarthy as Megan, who has an air of Gary Busey about her (i.e. she doesn't seem to be all there in the head). Like Wiig, McCarthy has the capacity to handle both drama and humour extremely well. Then there's Irishman Chris O'Dowd as the charming, kind-hearted Office Rhodes. O'Dowd is a delight in the role, and male viewers will likely find him the easiest to relate to (this reviewer did).

It's virtually impossible for Bridesmaids not to win you over. The film is destined to be a comedy classic, as it's a crowd-pleasing, entertaining, hilarious and heartfelt comedy which isn't in bad taste and doesn't succumb to empty-headed stereotypes. Male or female, you can relate to Bridesmaids in some capacity.

7.8/10

Bridesmaids was hilarious!!!!!!!! I laughed so hard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I even found the movie funny in some scenes, like the one of the dressing-room, which was hilarious. But I still don’t know, I haven’t found that great. Some jokes took much time and some others are too forced. It’s not a movie that I plan to watch it again. It’s far to be bad, however it’s not that great as great people say.

The movie is absolutely hilarious. I went in expecting a smart romantic comedy, at best, but in reality it's fantastic satire. The movie basically takes all the rituals leading up the wedding (and the wedding itself) and totally blows them all away. I got a hint of what's coming when the Maid of Honor and best friend (Kristen Wiig) and the new, rich best friend (Rose Byrne) try to one-up each other with the speeches at the engagement party. From that point on, it's one surprise after another. The best comedy, by far, this year.

The folks at the Judd Apatow film factory have, at times, been accused of quasi-sexism. Some feel that the films that have been directed and/or produced by him (KNOCKED UP, I LOVE YOU MAN, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, to name a few examples) give us male characters who are all goofy and fun, but then they give us female characters who are neurotic and complain all the time. Perhaps as a response to that, the Apatow production clan has come up with BRIDESMAIDS, a film that is all about showing us that girls can also let loose and engage in slapstick humor. While this film is inferior in quality to most of the Apatow-brand comedies (which have ranged from very good to near-great), I'm proud to say that not only is it a mostly effective work of humor, but that it finally gives a chance to Kristen Wiig (who has had some uproariously funny supporting roles in the past) to carry a film in a lead role. The result may not be comedic brilliance, but it's still a worthy ride.

Life is quickly turning very shitty for Annie (Kristen Wiig). Her bakery has gone broke. She's with a guy whom she'd like to at least try dating, but he only wants her for sex, and even rudely asks her to leave once their carnal encounters are over. She's running out of money, and her two apartment mates are being difficult about handling rent payments, and even worse, they go into Annie's room without her permission and read her diary. To make matters more difficult, Annie's best friend, Lill (Maya Rudolph), whom she has known since childhood, announces that she's getting married. This should be good news, except that Annie is worried about losing one of the few good things she has left in her life. Lill asks Annie to be her maid of honor, because, of course, she's supposed to be her best friend. But that, too, falls into question, once the wedding plans get under way, and Lill's new friend Helen (Rose Byrne), who is extremely wealthy and knows everything about planning all sorts of events, not only starts getting in the way of the wedding plans, but also seems to have an agenda aimed at stealing Annie's treasured spot as Lill's best friend. Cattiness ensues.

Ever since the bakery went broke, Annie has been working as an employee at a jewelry store, and there are two scenes that take place at that store in which Wiig gets to be at her most hilarious. Both of them involve Annie being initially "fake nice" to customers who have overly idealistic views about friends and family, yet eventually growing weary and spewing the harsh truth at them. The first scene in which she freaks out a couple is terrific ("He may not even be Asian!") and then the second scene, in which she has a delightfully venomous exchange with a bitchy high-schooler, is sheer brilliance.

But what really shocks me about BRIDESMAIDS is that, as much as I love Wiig and as much as I was looking forward to this film being "her show" so to speak, I have to admit that there is an actress in this film who upstages her. I'm talking about Melissa McCarthy, who plays the role of Lill's future sister-in-law, Megan. This performance is comedic genius. Her first scene, in which she tells the story of falling off a cruise and having an encounter with a dolphin, is absolutely uproarious, and don't even get me started on the airplane sequence. Megan embodies the Apatow trademark of having terrific secondary characters (i.e. Debbie in KNOCKED UP, Aldous Snow in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, the two cops in SUPERBAD). If McCarthy gets her own comedic vehicle in the future, count me in. The fact that she plays such a masterfully zany character in this film, yet we later find out that her character works in an ultra-serious, secretive government job is just damn funny in its great irony.

BRIDESMAIDS has what may be one of the longest sequences ever of scenes shot in the confines of an airplane (without being one of those films that is set mostly on an airplane). There are certainly a few instances in which the film could be criticized for being overlong and in need of trimming some of its fat - it runs over two hours, but if you had cut out a few things here and there, it could've easily been an hour and 40 minutes and just as funny (but then again, one could say that of nearly all of the Apatow clan's movies). However, that criticism doesn't apply to the airplane sequence, because EVERYTHING that happens during it is not only terrific, but it is edited seamlessly well. Wiig shines greatly in her portrayal of initially being paranoid about flying on a plane and then reacting to the effects of mixing prescription drugs and alcohol, while McCarthy never lets the laughs stop as her character interacts with a passenger whom she is convinced is an air marshal. The explosive conclusion of the airplane sequence is terrific, and the film surprised me when it doesn't allow our girls to arrive at their final destination, which was Las Vegas - I was totally expecting that this was going to devolve into a female imitation of THE HANGOVER, and was very pleased when I saw that the film chose to take another route.

Sadly, there are other areas in which the film doesn't fare as well. From the very first moment in which the animosity between Annie and Helen is set up, it feels like a cartoonish rivalry, rather than the more realistic material we've gotten in other Apatow-brand comedies. In one of the film's worst decisions, one of the first interactions between both characters involves a poorly-edited scene in which they purposely injure each other with tennis balls. The comedic timing is off here, and even worse, the scene feels misplaced, almost like it could've been appropriate later on in the film, or simply left on the cutting room floor. The rivalry between these two consists of tacked-on angry stares and forced disagreements. The hostility doesn't feel organic in the least bit. Consider, in contrast, the conflict between the two female characters in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. They were amiable towards each other, as much as you could subtly tell that there was an underlying discomfort, and the cattiness then starts taking place towards the climax, where it fits better, but it never feels like it's forced upon us. In BRIDESMAIDS, we're simply asked to believe that Helen is the villain and that's it. There's an attempt at the end to humanize her, but it involves the usual motions of the villain suddenly having a 180-degree attitude change and becoming a good person all of a sudden. This is too bad, because Rose Byrne is one hell of a terrific dramatic actress (see her in this year's INSIDIOUS), but she's stuck in a one-note villainous role here that doesn't allow her to shine like Kristen Bell did as the titular Sarah Marshall.

The second problem with BRIDESMAIDS is that it chooses to have a romantic subplot in which Annie seems to find potential for love in a nice cop she meets. The problem here is that there's little chemistry between the two lovebirds, and more importantly, this was unnecessary. There was more than enough material with all the wedding-related events, and this just feels like a way of fulfilling the apparent requirement that the lead MUST ALWAYS have a romantic interest in a film, which is clearly not true at all. Finally, my other quibble with the movie is that it does devolve occasionally into that hateful realm known as toilet humor, and I suspect the reason for its doing so is that it wants to say "Hey, look! Women in movies can engage in bodily functions too!" The problem is that I always fail to see the humor in said type of gross-out gags. Bodily functions simply aren't funny, whether they're carried out by a male or a female. I can't help but always get the feeling that they are inserted into movies whenever the filmmakers simply had no idea what else to put in as a joke, and for that, it reeks of laziness to me. I did appreciate the irony of having a group of women trying on bridal dresses and suddenly getting afflicted with food poisoning, because it offers a funny contrast between all the glamour and classiness we're used to seeing in these moments and the grossness that ensues, but it could've definitely been handled more tastefully.

All that aside, though, there's no denying that the majority of BRIDESMAIDS' running time consists of a hefty amount of humor. I still think that Kristen Wiig has the potential to do something extraordinary (in comedy or in drama, or even better, in a mixture of both), and while BRIDESMAIDS may not be at that level, it's definitely a good start. It sucked to see her so frequently relegated to supporting roles in which we couldn't get to see more of her hilarity, so if anything, I hope BRIDESMAIDS will be successful enough that it'll make Wiig a more marketable comedic figure in Hollywood. Melissa McCarthy's hoot of a supporting performance, though, won't soon be forgotten by me. This is the type of actress who can make you laugh even when she's not the center of attention in a scene in which two other people are talking and she's simply reacting to what is taking place.

BRIDESMAIDS may not achieve the above-average level of comedic quality as other films to which Judd Apatow has attached his name, but for those who have enjoyed those other films, there's a lot of that same mixture of humanity and raunchiness to be found here. Oh, and a warning: if you plan to wait for the DVD, make sure you don't confuse this film with BRIDE WARS, unless you're actually interested in a movie that features the same amount of "wedding cattiness" that we get in BRIDESMAIDS, minus the laughs.