Review: Bridesmaids

Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids follows Annie (Kristin Wiig) chosen as her best friend’s Maid of Honour, attempting to organise an oddball group of Bridesmaids.

Firstly, it’s incredibly nice to see a female-based comedy, that doesn’t star Jennifer Aniston or feel like it’s made for 14 year old girls. Bridesmaids features a wonderful array of sex jokes and toilet humour – being billed as an all female version of The Hangover. Unfortunately, Bridesmaids falls quite a bit short of The Hangover. I think the film has suffered from too much hype and that I was going to come away slightly disappointed regardless. That’s not to say it didn’t have some positive elements.

Kristen Wiig is a marvelous comic actress, after seeing her in MacGruber, I’ve become quite a big fan. She is generally excellent in Bridesmaids – remaining consistently funny whether she’s drunk on a plane or trashing a bachelorette party. Melissa McCarthy is also excellent addition as one of the Bridesmaids – Megan, and could perhaps be seen as Bridesmaids answer to Alan from The Hangover. Jon Hamm and Jill Clayburgh also feature in supporting roles, which are among some of the film’s best scenes.

Bridesmaids does have some genuinely hilarious moments – in particular, a graphic scene where the characters go to a dress fitting in an incredibly expensive bridal shop, but are struck by food poisoning. Other amusing scenes see Wiig trashing a French themed bachelorette party, destroying a giant cookie; or when she watches Tom Hanks and Wilson (the volleyball) being separated in Castaway.

Although, Bridesmaids begins as a raunchy R rated comedy for all the sexes, it eventually dwindles in standard romantic comedy territory; becoming more generic as the film goes on. There’s a particularly dull relationship formulated between Wiig’s character and an Irish police office (played by Chris O’Dowd) which wastes far too much of the film. There’s also some extremely funny supporting characters which feel completely underused especially Rebel Wilson and Matt Lucas as Annie’s oddball English roommates and  Wendy McLendon-Covey as another eccentric Bridesmaid.

The crude R-rated humour is incredibly funny when it appears but it’s too often bogged down by standard chick flick nonsense and an overlong run time.

Overall, Bridesmaids is worth a watch – largely for some wonderful comic performances and moments of excellent R-rated humour. However it’s downfall comes from a dull romantic subplot, pushing into the territory of a bland rom-com.