Female Focus
Page 35 BRIDESMAIDS
Kristen Wiig plays Annie Walker, a loser, a good person, but self-sabotaging, sliding too easily into self-pity. We can empathise with her while still diagnosing her issues: Nobody in the film is as cruel to her as she is to herself. Annie is flailing, and the impending marriage of her childhood friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) just magnifies all of
Annie’s demons. Presented with Lillian’s new best friend Helen (Rose Byrne), who’s loaded and can afford the best things for Lillian’s wedding, Annie pretty much loses it. The wedding itself is almost inconsequential: it’s Helen and everything she represents that make Annie crazy.
Farcical, awkward things happen in Bridesmaids, but they happen to recognisable people. Helen isn’t aware of how much she’s hurting Annie, because Annie is the one hurting herself; Annie can’t let go of the past, because her present sucks and her future doesn’t look great either. She doesn’t feel worthy of a true relationship, wasting herself in a sex-buddy role with a caddish Jon Hamm and distancing herself from a cop (Chris O’Dowd) who’s smitten with her.
Bridesmaids is full of flawed but fleshed-out people, which is why I can get this far into the review without mentioning the show-stopping slapstick gross-out pieces. I laughed so much at an early bit between Annie and Helen each trying to one-up each other’s expressions of love for Lillian; the scene is the whole movie in microcosm. A later scene aboard an airplane bound for Vegas is another comic triumph for Wiig and for Mitch Silva as the flight attendant trying to deal with her. And there’s the late Jill Clayburgh in a nice swan song as Annie’s mum, and the comedy powerhouse Melissa McCarthy as a woman whose high-school torments pushed her to greatness — she’s so comfortable with herself she puts everyone else to shame; she wants what she wants and sees no reason not to go after it.
Cast: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd
Director: Paul Feig Genre: Comedy Certificate: 15 Rating: 5/5 Running Time: 125 min.
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