Friday, May 13, 2011

Bridesmaids



Let me just say, that with a title like "Bridesmaids," and a poster like that ^, this movie should have had a lot more wedding mania related hijinks.  Not that I would have necessarily preferred that - thw whole bridezilla thing has been done - badly by Hollywood (Bride Wars), and even worse by reality tv.  So it's cool that this wasn't your typical chick flick catfight type movie, but still - expectations people.

Instead this movie is more about the implosion of one woman's life as her best friend is preparing to get married.  Which is fine and all, except that most of the implosions come as the result of her own pathetic, self sabotaging, woe is me behavior.  Not that Annie (played by Kristin Wiig with all kind of SNL character traits peeking through her body language) is a completely unlikeable character, it's just that because we are left never knowing why she has totally given up on trying at life we are left sort of thinking she should stop feeling so sorry for herself.

The relationship between Annie and Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is joy to watch, because the actresses are real life best friends, and their scenes pop with the chemistry of people who truly enjoy each others company.  But the true stars of the movie are Melissa McCarthy, who is by far the funniest thing in the movie, and Chris O'Dowd, who manages to be a truly dreamy romantic lead despite looking basically like a basset hound (I attribute this to his Irish accent).  Rose Byrne was well cast as the gorgeous, perfect wanna be maid of honor, trying to usurp Annie's spot as BFF, and Jill Clayburgh is ideal to play Kristin Wiig's mom; but Ellie Kemper and Wendi McLendon-Covey were sorely underutilized as a stereotypical naive newlywed and foul mouthed suburban mom.

This movie wasn't as funny as I had hoped, which isn't really saying much because my expectations were pretty unrealistically high.  To be completely honest, the movie was really funny- there were many times when I (and everyone else in the theater) laughed out loud.  This movie has been hailed as the female version of The Hangover, and while I don't know if it is going to have the shelf of life (or spawn the catchphrases) of that film, I do know that it is a really funny, and fun way to spend a couple of hours.


Bridesmaids 2hrs 5 min  R

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