MOVIE: Bridesmaids (2011)

Okay, everyone.  Prepare to hate me.  I am prepared to be hated.

After going to see Tower Heist last weekend and being pretty disappointed, I decided it was time to rent Bridesmaids, which I’d been saving for the right occasion after hearing rave after rave after RAVE about how hilarious it was.  How brilliantly written.  How refreshingly FEMALE.  How perfect in every way!

My reaction?  Are you all on crack?  Hey, that stuff ain’t good!  And neither is this movie!

Bridesmaids is about a desperately single woman, Annie (Kristen Wiig), whose best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged and asks her to be her maid of honor.  Lillian quickly introduces Annie to her fellow attendants, all of whom feature quirky, boring, stereotypical  personalities:  one is sickeningly perfect, one is fat and lacking in manners (must the fat character always be the character that burps and farts and has food on her face? God, I get tired of that), one is ditsy, one is an Old Married desperate to party sans spouse and kids, etc.

And then there’s Annie, the standard lost/seeking 30-something female who can’t keep a boyfriend or a job and doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life.  Okay, realistic.  But still: yawn.

As the wedding planning progresses, a battle begins between Annie and Lillian’s other close friend, the perfect, wealthy Helen (Rose Byrne, the physical manifestation of the flavor of tofu).  Broke Annie wants to keep things true to Lillian’s humble roots; Posh Lillian wants to throw a wedding that costs thousands and is insanely poofy in every way imaginable.  Cue lots of angry glares, cat fights, and sabotage.  End with heart of gold.  Beeyuck.

The highlight of the film’s comedic elements?  The scene in which the girls all get food poisoning and start puking, farting, and pooping all over a bridal showroom.  Really?  This is the hilarious scene everybody was raving about?  The POOP scene?    Ebert seemed pleased to see a chick flick crossed with a typical raunch comedy (“It definitively proves that women are the equal of men in vulgarity, sexual frankness, lust, vulnerability, overdrinking and insecurity,” he wrote in his review), but I say, of course we are.  Duh.  Generally, though, we try to exhibit a bit more class.  I do not think this is a bad thing.

I laughed out loud exactly once during this film, and that was during the airplane scene, in which, credit where credit is due, Wiig proves herself to be a master of physical comedy.  The rest of the time, though, while I was entertained enough to keep watching, I barely even cracked a smile.  I don’t understand why this film got so many raves;  there’s nothing here I haven’t seen ten thousand times before.  Even the love story — Annie falls head-over-heels with a cop; he’s the one character I truly liked, by the way  (in no small part because of his (Irish?) accent) — was predictable and dull.

Tell me, ladies — what gives?  What was it you liked so much about this movie?  The female version of The Hangover, I kept reading.  But the thing I loved the most about The Hangover was that its comedy was grown-up stuff.  I mean, silly too, but in a unique, more adult kind of way.  It was a raunch comedy refreshingly lacking in raunch; there wasn’t a single poop joke in that whole film.  This film, on the other hand, made the poop scene its apex.  And when the POOP scene is your APEX, it’s pretty much guaranteed your movie is going to fail to move me.  Pun intended.

SO DISAPPOINTED!  Is it just me?

IT IS?  Well, hell.  I never said I had good taste.

[Netflix it | Buy it]

Genre:  Comedy
Cast: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd, Melissa McCarthy, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Jon Hamm

Tags: Comedy