Bridesmaids Is by Girls, for Guys – movie review

After seeing so many movies like Knocked Up and The Forty-Year-Old Virgin, which have a habit of painting their female leads as crabby shrew-like creatures, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo decided to write a movie loaded with strong, funny female characters. That doesn’t mean this an exercise in feminism where every woman who appears on screen has no use for men. Rather, instead of focusing on the relationships of men and women, it shows the inner workings of a friendship between two women in different stages of their lives. And it’s also gross. The things that come out of these women’s mouths (and occasionally butts) are just downright vulgar and hilarious.

Kirsten Wiig stars as Annie, a failed business owner with money problems. She lives with a self-involved brother and sister. Her best friend Lillian is played by Maya Rudolph, who was a featured player on Saturday Night Live alongside Wiig for years. The two have great chemistry together, and you feel right away like they’ve known each other for years–and that’s because they have. They play off each other perfectly; you easily believe these are best friends. Unfortunately, Lillian is getting married and moving on with her life, which makes Annie feel bad about her where her life is heading.

Annie is, of course, Lillian’s maid of honor, and we get to meet the other bridesmaids. Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey) is Lillian’s cousin and married with three boys. Becca (Ellie Kemper) is newly married, but her sex life is complicated (her husband has a really weird, almost ritualistic need to prepare for sex). Megan is the groom’s sister and easily the standout character in the whole movie, getting the best/raunchiest lines and even turning out to be kind of a mentor near the movie’s third act.

Finally, we have Helen (Rose Byrne). I don’t know if it’s her face or her acting or what, but I immediately hated this broad. She is oddly obsessed with being Lillian’s best friend and goes to great lengths to undermine Annie’s job as maid of honor. She acts so sweet, but her words are tipped with venom, and the entire time you just want to punch her. She’s a good villainess. You can’t wait for her to get what’s coming to her, but it never comes. She gets yelled at briefly by Annie, but off screen she has this epiphany of how awful she’s been throughout the movie and becomes weirdly apologetic. It’s not the outcome I was hoping for. I wanted her to put in her place BAD. Oh, well. It happens.

Wiig does a fantastic performance, easily her best. She showed a lot more emotion than I’m used to seeing from her. There are a lot of lingering close-ups on her face, and you can really see how unhappy she is with her life. Yet, she still manages to bring the funny to every scene she’s in.

Along with the gross-out humor, there’s a good deal of funny awkward moments. You can chalk a lot of that to director Paul Feig, who has directed many episodes of The Office (most recently Steve Carell’s departure episode “Goodbye, Michael”), which is the king of awkward situations. He knows just how to draw a scene out to make it uncomfortable. You’ll cringe and want to look away, but you can’t because it’s just so funny.

Oh, and Jon Hamm has a small role as a douchey sex buddy of Annie’s. He’s brief, but really sells it and gets a ton of laughs. He’s one of the few guy characters, the other being Officer Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd), the love interest of Annie.

This is a film for women written by women starring women. I’m a guy, and I loved it. The other guys in the theater loved it–and so did the ladies. All other “chick flicks” fail compared to this one. I wouldn’t even call it a chick flick. It’s a highly entertaining movie about women that anyone could enjoy. Go see it. It’s worth it.