Ryan McNeil
If I have my facts straight (and I like to think I do) the circle of life goes like this where weddings are concerned:
Women get to collect their female friends and family members, tether four or five of ’em together who may or may not know each other well, and then lean on them for ten months or so of their lives. Once in a while it’s a bonding experience. More often than not though it’s wickedly stressful if not an all-out bloodbath…and the main reason why women agree to go through it is because eventually it’ll be their turn to wear the white dress.
Accepted, but I’m left wondering one thing. How in the world do you ladies get through being a bridesmaid without completely losing your mind?
Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Lillian (Maya Rudolph) are best friends and have been since childhood. Annie is broke after her bakery went bankrupt, has no serious relationship (though she has no qualms being friends-with-benefits with a twerp named Ted), and is living in a hell-hole with two weird roommates. Lillian on the other hand seems to have a lot going for her – supportive friends, good job, and a swell fella named Dougie who has just asked her to marry him.
Right after saying “yes”, she turns around and asks Annie to be her maid-of-honour.
Of course few maids-of-honour get to go it alone, so Annie is soon introduced to the rest of the bridesmaids…a motley crew that come off like THE USUAL SUSPECTS in taffeta. None of them have really met before, which really isn’t a problem where bonding is concerned…for the most part.
The biggest crack in this particular sisterhood is between Annie and Helen (Rose Byrne). Annie is the longtime best friend, but Helen is the day-to-day best friend, so toes aren’t being stepped on so much as they’re being impaled by ridiculously expensive stilettos. Worse yet, they’re being impaled by a woman who has everything that Annie doesn’t. And as much as Annie would like to just slink out the exit door of this particular stress situation, she wants nothing more than to be there for her longtime friend. The question becomes, how she’ll survive.
I tend not to get too far into marketing in this space, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the bait-and-switch that is the marketing campaign for BRIDESMAIDS. Much of what audiences were given in advance played this film as a raunchy chick-flick (“A female HANGOVER” has been the party line), and that really isn’t the case. Even the title is misleading, since the film isn’t so much about the group as a whole as it is the Annie-Lillian-Helen tug of war with the other three women peppered in. The misdirection isn’t a bad thing; quite the contrary actually as it turns what we are given into a welcome surprise.
That surprise is the story of Annie trying to get it together when she’s at her lowest and being asked to step up. We meet her at a moment when absolutely nothing is going right for her, and yet she’s being asked to stand up in front of groups of strangers and be a beacon for her childhood best friend. BRIDESMAIDS isn’t afraid to paint the role of maid-of-honour for what it is – a colossal pain in the ass. Watching Annie not only attempt to be there for her best friend, but in some ways have to fight for her feels unexpectedly genuine…and much of the credit for that needs to go to Kristen Wiig.
If you’ve watched SNL over the last few seasons, you’re well aware of the heavy-lifting Wiig is doing on that show. Much of her efforts either have her dialing up the snark, or going full-bore and fearlessly throwing herself into some outlandish characters. In BRIDESMAIDS however, she dials it back a bit and really lets us into Annie’s life. We begin by shaking our heads at the state she’s in, but eventually find a great deal of pity for her. Giving this sort of shape to the character has Wiig following through on the promise she showed with her small role in WHIP IT! One can only hope that this isn’t the last time we see it.
BRIDESMAIDS is rather funny, even if it’s not the slapstick/gross-out romp it’s made out to be – and in my book that’s a good thing. Much of the non-Wiig humour comes from Melissa McCarthy (who steals every scene she’s in), Jon Hamm (playing a douche for the ages), and Maya Rudolph (who Hollywood oddly under uses). Funny as it is, the film is not without its flaws. There are one or two sequences that go on a bit too long, and Ellie Kemper and Wendi McLendon-Covey seem to get left behind after the halfway mark, which is criminal especially for the latter.
Imperfections aside, this film is surprisingly good. It finds a nice balance between the bedlam of being a bridesmaid, and the self-loathing that many of us can find ourselves in when nothing wants to go our way. It doesn’t make its bones on potty humour so much as potty-mouthed humour. The dialogue the women whip back and forth would amuse all on its own, but for me it landed even funnier when I thought about all the women I’ve met that talk just like that but are seldom represented in film.
BRIDESMAIDS entertains in the way that it goes down unexpected paths and finds a balance between the raunch and the truth. It’s the tale of a friend at her most pathetic being asked to step up and be a champ, and that would be good enough on its own. Giving us that while some truly funny women are allowed to swing away goes above and beyond. The film is a lot of fun, and if I have a hope it’s that so-called “chick flicks” as smart as this aren’t so few and far between.