On the couch

At first I thought I wasn’t biologically equipped to fully enjoy the giddy, gross-out heights of Bridesmaids. The hype that surrounded it – it put the ‘bra’ into brat pack and broke down the boundaries that apparently stopped women making fart jokes in movies – made Paul Feige’s flick something of an event movie for groups of gals. Men need not apply.
But was it deserved? Is it really that funny? More importantly, do you have to be a girl to enjoy it. The answer is no. Not because it has a broader appeal than you might think but simply because it’s just not that funny. Amusing in parts but just not the laugh riot it’s made out to be.
The plot centres around Annie (Kirsten Wiig). Slightly battered by life – her baking business failed, boyfriend left her, her current “special friend” is about as likeable and upstanding as a typhoid-riddled stool with two legs and her weird, bulbous British housemates have taken to rooting through her stuff – she has her somewhat depressing life rubbed right in her face when best mate Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged.
Trouble begins early when, selected to be the maid of honour, she starts to butt heads with Lillian’s new bff Helen, the pampered alpha female wife of her future husband’s boss.
The build-up to the nuptials becomes the battlefield on which the girls wage war for the titleLillian’s most beloved mate.
Outlandish tricks, a meltdown or two and a messy (but truly funny/disturbing) incident with a dress fitting and bad taco meat ensue. As Annie tries to save her friendship through fair means and (more often) foul, she also makes the acquaintance of the charming Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd).
The problem with Bridesmaids is that, other than O’Dowd as Officer Nice Guy, none of the characters are particularly engaging. In fact, from Annie down, you’d be hard pressed to find someone you’d want to spend a brief trip in a lift with, let alone a whole film. This seems like a waste because there are some very good individual performances.
Wiig is at times brilliant. Annie is occasionally hilarious and heartbreaking but, for every positive step forward the character makes towards not being a gigantic muppet, she gets let down by the script.
Melissa McCarthy, better known from Gilmore Girls and Samantha Who, also makes a big impression providing nearly all of the film’s physical comedy and some of its best lines.
After that, there’s really very little to recommend. Rose Byrne is suitable well coiffed and bitchy, O’Dowd does his usual bumbly nice bloke thing and Jon Hamm is handsome with a faint hint of villany.
The rest of the cast are all fairly forgettable, getting lost in a cloud of blandness and unfunny stereotypes. Even the bride, who you would imagine would be fairly important to the story given there isn’t one without her, is left to wallow on the sidelines, popping up occasionally to look slightly cranky about Annie’s latest atrocity in the name of friendship.
In order for the story to work, you need to root for the gals at least a little bit. If you don’t care about Annie getting her act together and Lillian making it up the aisle in one piece then it’s just a bunch of fights and fart gags interspersed with scenes from the gradual nervous breakdown of an out-of-work baker.
And the fights and fart gags just aren’t funny enough to string things along like that. While a few moments shine through as being sniggerworthy – the dress fitting and anything involving Melissa McCarthy – there isn’t enough substance in Bridesmaids to warrant the hoopla that surrounds it.