Review

Review Date: 15-May-11
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Bridesmaids (2011)

Kristen Wiig has been working up to Bridesmaids for a while. Another member of the SNL cast to "cross over," she began cropping up in live-action and animated films in 2007. Yet even when she had the major female part, as in this year's Paul, she felt like a supporting player. Unconsciously, I had written her off as "that actress they get for nondescript comedy chicks," but Bridesmaids has put a stop to that. In a central role that she co-wrote with Annie Mumolo, Wiig emerges as the female counterpart to Steve Carell, a comedic headliner who can handle drama and make audiences relate to her bumpy road through life.

In fact, Carell's The 40-Year-Old Virgin was the movie that launched the R-rated comedy craze of which Bridesmaids is the latest example. I suspect that one factor in these movies' popularity is a cast that looks like real people instead of Hollywood idols. Wiig, attractive in a waifish way which suits a lost soul, might be your next-door neighbor if your next-door neighbor were bottoming out. Her character Annie is a failed entrepreneur who sublets a room from the creepiest siblings ever and whose love life consists of pleasuring a jerk who has no interest in her beyond casual sex. At least she has her lifelong best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) to lighten her load. But then catastrophe happens: Lillian gets engaged. Not only will Annie lose Lillian to the demands of a husband and eventual children; in the immediate future, she will lose her to the competing attentions of her bridesmaids.

As it set out to do, the movie shows that women can be just as stupid and raunchy as men, especially when faced with the distaff gauntlet of a wedding. In one squirmy-funny scene Annie spars with her new rival, the perfectly coiffed hostess Helen (Rose Byrne), to give Lillian the most sentimental engagement-party toast. The dress fitting is swamped by a deluge of bodily excretions, effectively answering the age-old question, Does a bride shit in the street? Meanwhile, as the bachelorette party goes from bad to worse, Annie meets a cop (Chris O'Dowd) who is so eligible that she dumps him out of terror and confusion. He, of course, is on hand to assure viewers that the heroine has better times ahead, and anyone watching Wiig's performance must surely root for her happy ending even while they're laughing at her pain. That's the beauty of Bridesmaids: how its immaturity overlies and even complements its maturity, proving that comedy is best used as an antidote, brave expression, or simple balm for the hardships of being an adult.

Copyright © 2011 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.