Bridesmaids
Well, it was certainly better than “Sex and the City 2″…
Now that I’ve had a chance to see the first comedy smash of the summer in its entirety, all of the jokes and scenes I’ve seen doing theatre walks make sense. Well, sort of. Admittedly, after the 5th or 6th time seeing the food poisoning scene and Kristen Wiig’s Annie at her job at a jewelry store, a lot of the gags have lost their comic bite, leaving us with a two hour film about a woman who has built up years of resentment towards life that blind her from accepting responsibility for her life, and make it difficult for her to take first (or second) chances at the things she wants the most. And when her childhood best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph, Wiig’s real-life bff), gets married, things come to a head for Annie when she feels threatened by Helen (Rose Byrne), Lillian’s newest friend, and seemingly everything that Annie isn’t, making Annie’s abilities to pull off her maid of honor duties even tougher.
If the film, written by Wiig and Annie Mumolo, didn’t try to make out like a female “Hangover,” this would have been a really good comedy-drama about friendship and how it changes over time, not unlike the first “Sex and the City” film. Unfortunately, while Wiig, Rudolph, and the rest of the women in this bridal party (in particular, Ellie Kemper’s Becca and Melissa McCarthy’s Megan) are game for such highjinks, and certainly more than capable of selling raunch and broad comedy, but director Paul Feig (a TV director making only his fourth feature, and first since 2006’s “Unaccompanied Minors”) can’t find the right balance to make it work onscreen.
