Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011)


First, don’t ever read the chosen critics lines on movie posters. Second, always learn to read a review and/or a critic until the end. Third, one liners are lame and even if it says “It’s the female version of The Hangover” or “The Best Comedy of the Year!” don’t listen to them and learn to read more than one review about a film. I do not pretend to possess the ultimate knowledge and no one should be neither.

Especially in the case of Bridesmaids, almost fully casted by current and former SNL players; Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, etc. It was a good cast and the idea, even if it sounds like a female The Hangover, well it is so not the case by the way, falls flat on many levels.

The weakness of the script is that it travels between absurd comedy, rom-com, existential drama, and bathroom jokes. It literally shoots on too many ducks at one time. Even if the target isn’t missed every time it is hard to follow the lead here because every scene is like a sketch and maybe it lacks of links or should had had a stronger director to hold the glue together... But, many situations are too long and the comedy slowly becomes a malaise for the viewer that tries to identifies with Wiig’s character that constantly fells deeper and deeper.

I wouldn’t say that this movie is “awful” as my compatriot Kevyn Knox noted in his capable review but I would say that it was quite a light comedy that even if the laughs aren’t as frequent as they should be, it wasn’t a torture either. However, I fully agree with Mr. Knox on the fact that producer Judd Apatow is wrongly recognized as the new guru of Hollywoodian comedies. The pedestrian humour and the bathroom jokes even if efficient, I really don’t understand the public sometimes, are simply bad taste and could be excised from the script. The greater laughs I’ve heard in a theatre were when I first saw The Great Dictator by Charles Chaplin circa 2002. It was clear honest laughs of clever humour about one of the most important moments in the History of humanity. I’m not comparing Bridesmaids with The Great Dictator but I am saying that to be funny a film doesn’t need to be vulgar or disgusting. A lesson Apatow must learn and apply in his movies.