In a recent New Yorker profile of actress Anna Faris, writer Tad Friend reflects at length on the dearth of farcical comedies for women and dissects the mentality that discourages studios from making them. According to the conventional wisdom in Hollywood, when a couple goes on a date the man picks the movie, and though women will go along with seeing a rowdy, male-oriented comedy, men avoid “chick flicks” like the plague. If a woman stars in a comedy it had better be a romantic comedy, the sort of thing women go to see alone or with their female friends. There’s also a pervasive belief that women just aren’t funny—never mind a tradition of screen comediennes that begins with Mabel Normand in the silent era and continues on through Marion Davies, Carole Lombard, Gracie Allen, Lucille Ball, Madeline Kahn, Gilda Radner, and Tina Fey.
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Bridesmaids is hilariously funny, but what makes it exhilarating is how boldly it defies that conventional wisdom about what men and women like. The producer is Judd Apatow, whose hit comedies (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express) trade heavily in the “bromance” among their male characters; the cowriter and star is Kristen Wiig, whose brilliant character work on Saturday Night Live and endless scene-stealing in movies (Ghost Town, Adventureland, Whip It) have finally won her the big-screen vehicle she deserves. I’ve watched Bridesmaids with two different preview audiences, and as far as I could tell the gags connected equally well with the men and the women. Remarkably, the comedy comes from a genuinely female perspective, but its being female isn’t nearly as important as its being genuine.
Back in the 90s, when Apatow and director Paul Feig were collaborating on the much-beloved TV series Freaks and Geeks, they would ask the actors and writers to recount the most embarrassing things that had ever happened to them, and sometimes incorporated these stories into the scripts. Even more than the bromance aspect, this focus on personal pain has been the defining characteristic of Apatow’s best movies, and it’s clearly been embraced by Wiig and her screenwriting partner, Annie Mumolo. The Annie of the movie never suffers more than when her friendship with Lillian is being upstaged by the rich and beautiful Helen. When Helen throws an engagement party for the bride at a swank country club in Chicago, the two rivals fight for the PA microphone and continuously one-up each other’s public declarations of affection for Lillian. But as the wedding nears, there’s no way Annie can compete with Helen’s bottomless bank account, and for her their contest turns into one humiliation after another.
★★★★
Directed by Paul Feig
