Film Review: Bridesmaids
May 19, 2011 08:24AM ● By Wendy Sipple
Annie is a thirtysomething girl who feels lost in life. She has lost her company along with her life savings, her boyfriend left her when her shop failed, she has two annoying roommates and she can barely make her bills. In short her life is not going the way she wants it.
Lillian, Annie’s childhood friend, gets engaged and asks her to be the maid of honor. Annie, of course, accepts. Annie meets the rest of the bridal party composed of several woman, but the main adversary of the bunch is Helen. Helen is filthy rich and hell bent on becoming the maid of honor as well. Annie fights a losing battle as Helen bests Annie at every turn, and the more Annie tries the worse her life becomes.
Bridesmaids is one of the best movies of the year. It has huge laughs for sure, but the true strength of Bridesmaids is in its characters. The movie, co-written by its star Kristen Wiig, spends time developing all the characters that populate the movie. Even the adversary of the film, Helen, is someone in the end you can feel for. The movie is chalked full of heart, and therefore all the laughs are well earned and are character driven. That is not to say it doesn’t have its fair share of gross out moments as well. There is a scene of the girls shopping for dresses that had me laughing so hard it brought tears to my eyes.
The movie all around is great, but Melissa McCarthy’s character of Megan, sister of the groom, is perhaps one of the greatest screen personalities of the last few decades. I loved Megan and wished Bridesmaids was an hour longer just to see more of her. I hope they make an entire movie about this character, I would be first in line.
The rest of the cast also have their moments to shine. The writers seem to have a character from every walk of life among the bridal party so no matter if you’re married or single you have a character to relate to. The other supporting actor who I found very enjoyable was good guy cop Officer Rhodes play by Chris O’Dowd. His low key comic delivery was perfect and very endearing.
Director Paul Feig has a terrific history of directing touching and funny episodes of some of televisions best comedies (most recently Michael Scott’s last episode of the Office on NBC). He has made a great transition from TV to film with Bridesmaids. He demonstrates a great knack for balancing drama with comic pacing. I expect that he will have a hit with Bridesmaids and I look forward to his future work in film.
I suspect that because Bridesmaids is associated with weddings and has primarily an all female cast it will be assumed that it is a “chick flick” but that couldn’t be any further from the truth. Good comedy is good comedy. Judd Aptow has had his name associated with some of the best received comedies this decade (he only produced this particular film), and I can say without doubt that Bridesmaids is definitely my favorite of his films. With the hilarious Hall Pass already released, now Bridesmaids, and several other potentially films set to be released in the coming months, 2011 is shaping up to be a great year for comedy. Go see Bridesmaids. You will not be disappointed.
FILMS LIKE BRIDESMAIDS – 40 Year Old Virgin, Wedding Singer and Wedding Crashers
Justin Buettner is Style's resident movie dude! How did he get this role? Well, he graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a Bachelor of Arts in film Production and a duel minor in Animation and Business with an emphasis in the entertainment field. He later went on to work on several independent films in various key roles including writer and later worked in the special effects field as a motion capture artist. He has since relocated to the Sacramento area with his family and continues writing for small independent films in addition to his movie reviews for Style Magazine.