Calling this film the female HANGOVER is easy. Wedding prep theme. Crude humor. Personality conflicts. Comedic mayhem. Both films have all these things in common. But the female part is key. It's what really sets the films apart. Male friendships are vastly different than female friendships and this film knows it.
Annie (Kristen Wiig, TV's SNL) is down on her luck. As she says she was the only person stupid enough to open a bakery during a recession. Following the failure of her business, she lost her longtime boyfriend and has now hooked up with the piggish Ted (Jon Hamm, TV's MAD MEN), who just wants her as his sex buddy. She is so close to being forced to move back in with her recovering alcoholic mother (Jill Clayburgh, AN UNMARRIED WOMAN). Then her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph, AWAY WE GO) makes her the maid of honor in her wedding. This is the start of her descent to rock bottom.
Annie tries to plan bachelorette parties and wedding showers and help pick out dresses on her limited budget, but things never work out as planned. Making matters worse, Helen (Rose Byrne, GET HIM TO THE GREEK) is always there to make her look bad. She's rich and beautiful and passive-aggressive as hell. If they aren't battling over giving the best speech at the engagement party, they're arguing over where they should eat.
Of course other personalities always add more conflict. Here comes the other bridesmaids. Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey, TV's RENO 911!) is married and has three boys. She is eager to use the wedding festivities as a way to get away from the chaos at home. She wants to see male genitals that are not her husband's STAT! Becca (Ellie Kemper, TV's THE OFFICE) is the conservative one who seems nervous about everything. Megan (Melissa McCarthy, TV's MIKE & MOLLY) is Lillian's fiancee's sister. She is memorable. This rotund government employee is blunt, masculine ever makes best friends instantly.
Instead of bringing her up, the stress of wedding planning crashes Annie down. From her job at a jewelry store to the lavish wedding plans, everything reminds her how bad her life is going. She starts lashing out, which doesn't help the situation at all. She gets pulled over for having her taillights broken and the nice officer Nathan Rhodes (Chris O'Dowd, TV's THE IT CROWD) lets her go because he remembers how good her cakes were. They meet up again and develop a sweet relationship, but she burns that too. Failure has been rotten to her.
Wiig, who co-wrote the film with Annie Mumolo, proves once against that she is one of the premiere comedians working today. And better yet, she's also a great actress. She makes Annie funny, but complex and wounded. The whole film is better because she is so believable. Byrne also proves that she has a great funny bone. Her job here is to take the punches a lot of times, but she never makes her character cartoonish. And wow is Melissa McCarthy having a great year. She won an Emmy for MIKE & MOLLY and now has shown amazing range in the plum role here. Her character is meant to be a joke, but Megan doesn't know that. McCarthy never puts the audience in a headlock and forces them to laugh at her; she does it with conviction to making her character real, which is always funnier because we're laughing out of recognition.
At over two hours it's a long comedy. Some sequences, like the engagement party speeches and airplane scenes, do go on too long, but for the most part the length comes from good character development. Even overlong scenes can be forgiven because they're funny. Annie finds many wonderfully felonious ways to gain the attention of the cop she has offended.
What makes BRIDESMAIDS special is that it understands female friendships. Annie has been friends with Lillian for ages and sees Helen as an interloper who is buying Lillian's friendship. The bond between these women is complex with its good and bad dimensions. The guys in HANGOVER are a bit shallower. They ride each other. They fight. They get over it. They race to make sure their women don't kill them. In BRIDESMAIDS there is more at stake between the friends. There is an entire sequence of puking and diarrhea and that still has feelings behind it.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
