Review: ‘Bridesmaids’

Do not pick this woman to be your maid of honor. Universal
Do not pick this woman to be your maid of honor. Universal

1. "Bridesmaids" is a terrific comedy, zany, ribald and fearless in just about every way you'd want a comedy to be. It's being sold as sort of a "Hangover" for ladies, but it's more thoughtful than that, as committed to every joke but softer, less antagonistic, less, well, male. I'm hesitant to even describe the film that way, because it makes it sound like it's almost funny by accident, that it's some of sort of comedy of manners, a polite chortle that makes you laugh without feeling bad. You know: feminine. That's selling "Bridesmaids" short, mostly because the film doesn't really care what you want to sell it, or what trend piece you want to write from it. It just wants to make you laugh. In this, it succeeds magnificently.

2. Still, thinking of this a Judd Apatow comedy, just with women in the men's roles, is missing the point entirely. The film stars Kristen Wiig, who co-wrote the script (how Apatowian!), as Annie, a thirtysomething woman whose life is a mess after the bakery she founded goes under. (As played by Wiig, one suspects she wasn't exactly entirely in charge of her life when the bakery was rolling either.) As she's trying to pull it all together, her best friend Lillian (played nicely, as always, by Maya Rudolph) asks her to be the maid of honor at her upcoming wedding. Lillian has married up, and now hangs out in Chicago with upper crust folks (represented by an appropriately bland and snotty Rose Byrne), while Annie's life falls apart in Milwaukee. Thus, a series of Annie-caused fiascos as her neuroses and general calamitous nature wreak havoc.

3. In a typical Apatowian comedy, the arrested development of Annie would be treated as almost heroic, or at least a charming phase our protagonist needs to grow out of. It is to the credit of both Wiig the actress and Wiig the screenwriter that Annie is portrayed as an ambulatory case, one pitied and barely tolerated by her friends and family. (The late Jill Clayburgh plays her mother wanly and warily.) It's a tricky rope to walk, creating a protagonist who messes up every situation she's in and still making her likable, and save for a stray moment or two (including one ugly scene at Lillian's wedding shower where the film loses the thread entirely), "Bridesmaids" pulls it off. This is a tremendous showcase for Wiig, whose is so nicely modulated, grounded yet prone to floating off into the mesosphere, that you'll forget "Saturday Night Live"'s Gilly ever existed. Wiig is downright acrobatic here, dizzy and daffy yet relatable in a way that recalls Lucille Ball without ever veering toward the cloying. Of her many great scenes, my favorite is still when she attempts to grab the attention of her good-hearted policeman love interest by breaking the law in front of him in as many ridiculous ways as possible. Played by anyone else, Annie would be insufferable. With Wiig, you can't help but love her.

4. Wiig and director Paul Feig have populated their cast with actors who are as game as Wiig to go to the ends of hell for a laugh. Jon Hamm, who plays against his handsomeness in ways George Clooney would never dare, is consistently uproarious as a jerk rich ex-boyfriend of Annie's who uses her for sex and can't be bothered with pretending otherwise. (He's responsible for the several of Annie's many humiliations, and never seems to notice.) Wendi McLendon-Covey shines as a "happily" married mother who treats the wedding as a way to vent about the daily injustices of being a happily married mother. But the film is swiped, the set furniture ripped up, torn apart and sold for scrap, by Melissa McCarthy as Megan, a grunting, gassy, almost feral being whose presence and energy is so strong that everyone else is absorbed in her wake. The posters make her out to be a sort of freak, the ugly girl who thinks she's attractive, but McCarthy's having none of this: She grabs every character, and the film, by the collar and shakes it into submission; she is the butt of no one's joke. It's a virtuoso, sidesplitting performance. I had never seen McCarthy before this film -- apparently she's on the television show "Mike and Molly" -- and it was remarkable to discover that she's nothing like her character at all. Megan is one of those rare, timeless characters that's you kinda can't believe exists; whether she was created by science or magic, she's a primal force that propels the movie anytime it might lag. She's a riot.

5. "Bridesmaids" has its moments of bawdy humor, most notably a scene at a dress fitting that comes a little too soon after lunch at a shady restaurant. This scene is funny -- Rudolph handles excreting in the middle of a busy street while wearing a wedding dress in as dignified a fashion as possible -- but that's not where the heart of "Bridesmaids" is. It's a celebration of friendship, but in a real way, in the way that you tolerate the foibles of your own friends even when your life has passed them by, the way that your oldest friends know you better than anyone else, most notably yourself. But there I go, trying to attach some sort of touchy-feely narrative to "Bridesmaids," playing into the "Hangover for ladies" notion again. There's a message in "Bridesmaids," and there's some real heart there, but let's not lose sight here: "Bridesmaids" is pants-wettingly funny. That's all that really matters.

Grade: A-