Bridesmaids

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.