It's been lauded as the future of female comedy. Written by (and ostensibly for) women, it's a blockbuster comedy whose comedic leads (and, for the most part, the entire supporting cast) are all women. It's, essentially, The Hangover (the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time) but with LADIES. How novel, how droll. Women, it seems, CAN be as funny as men. Who knew?
This should be great. As a comedy-loving feminist, I should be all. over. this. Just the fact that a successful comedy was written by two women should be enough to make me rush out to sing its praises, not to mention the fact that it's R-rated (meaning it's more difficult to achieve financial success since the age range it can reach is limited) AND stars women. And I was excited to see it. Many of my friends (whose comedic opinions I respect) loved it, as did the critics. As of this writing it has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
But...I didn't love it. In fact, that comedy-loving feminist inside me had quite a few problems with it. I'll warn you now there are going to be many spoilers here so if you've waited eight months to see a movie called Bridesmaids (SPOILER: There's a wedding!) and you care about being surprised about the plot, I suggest you stop reading here.
My first concern was with the main character, played by the incredibly talented Kristen Wiig of SNL fame. Wiig was also one of the writers, and thus had quite a bit of artistic control over how her character was portrayed. And the way she was portrayed was: pretty terribly. I understand that stories need conflict, that there must be an obstacle to be surmounted, and that our heroes must go through personal and emotional growth. If all of that didn't happen, it would be a pretty unsatisfying story. However the way Wiig's character, named Annie, manifested that road to growth was to fall into the cliche and rather insulting traps of both the men and women of recent Hollywood comedies.
How she's like the men: Frankly, Annie is kind of an asshole. She's selfish and stubborn. She's fairly rude. At one point she's fired from her job for calling a sixteen year old girl the c-word for pretty much no reason. Funny? Yeah, sure. In the same way that Seth Rogan's character in Knocked Up is funny because he acts like an adolescent boy, but is really an adult. I don't know when emotional immaturity became the standard for comedic leads, but it's something that Annie exhibits frequently throughout the movie.
She's also completely emotionally unavailable. Here's where I had mixed feelings. I loved the point in the movie where she walks out on her love interest after the first time they spend the night together. The next morning he's sweet and caring and pushing things just a little too fast, and she balks. I've been there, I've done that, and I don't think I've ever seen it portrayed in a movie, especially a comedy. The roles are usually reversed, and it's the woman who's trying to take things too fast (because babies and marriage and stuff, you know) and the man hilariously runs screaming (because fear of commitment and desire to sow one's wild oats, duh). To see it played the other way around really rang true for me. However, afterwards she treats him terribly, ignoring his calls and cutting him out of her life completely with no explanation. Of course, after she realizes she's been a jerk she tries to make it up to him (sort of), but it appears the damage has been done because she was a total jerk to him. But...more on this later.
How she's like the women: She's shrewish and irrational. She lets her womanly emotions get the better of her. She overreacts to situations, which often results in comedy, but the comedy is brought about because she was too emotional and decided to deal with her feelings inappropriately. This treatment of women and their emotions only serves to reinforce the idea that women are like ticking time bombs of "FEELINGS," poised to explode at any minute. The results are funny, yes. But at what cost? By vilifying the expression of emotion and by exaggerating it to epic proportions, it makes it socially acceptable to condemn women when they express their feelings at all -- something which has happened to me countless times and something that I am sick of dealing with.
In addition to being emotionally unavailable with someone who appears to care about her, she allows herself to be taken advantage of emotionally and sexually by someone who is clearly a complete asshole. Again, I had mixed feelings here. For one, the asshole, played by a pitch-perfect Jon Hamm, has some of the most hilarious lines in the movie. Unfortunately, they were so hilarious because I've heard them (or variations of them) in my own unfulfilling romantic liaisons with complete assholes. I was also torn because that situation is very realistic and again, I don't think I've seen it portrayed in a film. Sometimes a girl sleeps with a complete asshole because, hey, we have needs, they can help fulfill them, and it's not like we need to have a relationship or commitment or anything, right? We're free, we're independent, it's the damn...whatever comes after the 00's, for god's sake! However, in a line from bride-to-be Maya Rudolph (also from SNL and who I thought was great and beautiful [if a little one-dimensional] in this movie), she points out how ultimately emotionally shredding that experience can be, and how Annie always feels terrible about herself afterwards. Which is totally the reality of relationships like that. Yet we never see that experience in the film. We see Annie be submissive to him and his desires (because he's sooo handsome, of course), completely disregarding her own concerns and feelings about their relationship, but we never see the aftermath, we never see how it affects her. Annie brushes off that comment by her best friend (again, because he's handsome), and it's never mentioned again. Towards the end of the movie, he hilariously (and oh-so-subtly) propositions her for road head (if you don't know, don't Google it please). She finally takes a stand against his assholery and asks to be let out of his car, which constitutes the most empowering moment of the film but which falls flat because we never see how his poor treatment of her affects her until this point.
My second concern: girl-on-girl hate.
Here's the thing. It's hard out there for a pimp woman. Not only do we have to deal with misogyny coming at us from men, but we also have to deal with hate coming from our fellow ladies. There have been countless studies about how difficult it is for women to work together in groups because of our evolutionary compulsion to compete with each other for dominance. As a survivor of eight years at all-girls school (from 5th through 12th grade -- arguably the cattiest time in a girl's life), I can attest to the fact that girls can be incredibly cruel to each other. And the central plot and comedy-generator for this film revolves around women subtly and overtly being horrible to other women. It's one thing to showcase this phenomenon, because it's very real and definitely something that happens. But to glorify it, like this movie does? It's the same problem as the condemnation of Annie's emotionality -- by treating it as something that it's okay to build a movie around, you're excusing it as something that is acceptable, when it's not. This movie was like an Eli Roth film, only instead of dismembering nubile adolescents, the women emotionally dismember each other. Notice how the men in male-dominated comedies don't attack each other? (Think the aforementioned Knocked Up and The Hangover, or basically any Judd Apatow film.) They're in it together, working towards a common goal. In Bridesmaids, the film's entire conflict revolves around issues between Annie and another bridesmaid. How about a movie that shows women supporting each other while still getting into funny situations?
Third concern: body image. There are multiple times in the movie when Annie's weight is alluded to in a negative way. Helen, the main antagonist, is rich, thin, and beautiful. Annie is...just thin and beautiful, I guess? [And is still somehow able to afford an $800 bridesmaid dress and a plane ticket to Vegas? Even after being fired from her job? I was very confused about her finances in this movie.] Anyway, there are several lines where Helen disparages Annie's weight, saying how she's "much smaller than Annie." and things to that effect. Her weight (and the fact that it is less than ideal) is mentioned multiple times, both by Annie and others. But here's the deal. Kristin Wiig looks AMAZING in this movie. You see her in a bra and underwear at one point and she looks better at 38 than I do at 21.
I couldn't find a shot from the movie, but here she is in her skivvies from a recent GQ shoot:
I'm sure there's been some Photoshop magic performed on this picture, but this is pretty much exactly how we see her in the movie. Not a lick of extraneous fat anywhere on her body. And this is the woman we are supposed to believe is overweight. If she were any less "overweight" she might cease to exist. I would have expected more from the female writers. They know how hard it is for women to try to conform to the nigh-impossible standard of beauty set forth by the stick-thin movie stars and models of the media. So to imply that being this thin is not thin enough? That's messed up. Shame on you, ladies.
Fourth concern: the food poisoning scene.
I knew it was coming. I'd heard it talked about -- and lauded -- virtually every time this movie came up in conversation. I had steeled myself. I had thought I was prepared.
I was not.
Nothing can really prepare you for it, especially if you're as averse to watching people vomit on and around each other as I am. It was funny, I guess, if scatological humor is your thing? I'll admit that it's absolutely not, in any way, my cup of humor tea. I hate any kind of humor that deals with bodily fluids. I think it's crass and disgusting. But my biggest problem with it is that it's easy. It's the lowest possible form of humor. It doesn't require any thought or cleverness. Someone poops in a fancy dress? Done. Someone poops in a sink in a fancy dress? You have, apparently, comedy gold.
Technically this is just a matter of taste on my part. And I'll be honest: it was kind of great to see women taking on these horrible sight gags when the vast majority of scatological humor is left to the men. But can't we rise above the lowest common denominator? By having women sink to the level of men, it makes us more equal, yes.
But in the end we're still covered in vomit and excrement.
Fifth (and fifth point five) concerns: rich women are skinny, pretty bitches. Fat people are socially inept sexual deviants (with, probably, a heart of gold). I'm tired of seeing these cliches in movies. If this movie is indeed the future of female comedy, let's get rid of these stale tropes, okay?
Sixth (and final) concern: the classic, tidy, romantic-comedy ending. [If my earlier warning about spoilers was not enough to deter you from reading this post but you still care about how the movie ends, you can skip this part since I will be talking about the very end of the film.]
Annie was a jerk to her love interest, remember? They slept together, she walked out on him, she didn't return his calls. He makes it clear to her that, since she hasn't returned his calls, he doesn't want to see her again because her treatment of him has hurt him. She still has feelings for him, of course, and so she tries to win him back. She bakes him a cake. She tries to enlist his help in finding her missing best friend by adorably breaking the law in front of him. He's a cop, so it's not an entirely unreasonable request, though it is a pretty unlawful way to go about getting what you want. (Also, he seems to be the only cop in the entire state of Wisconsin, but that's neither here nor there.) He remains steadfast in his determination to not let her win him back. He lets raccoons eat the cake. He ignores her lawbreaking up to a point, and only grudgingly helps her find her friend (since technically he's just doing his job). When they part ways, it's clear that he's sticking to his guns and her poor treatment of him is not going to be erased by her culinary peace offering and her silly reckless driving...
...until he shows up after the wedding in a suit and tie. (How did he know where it was? Or when it would be over? Is there no reception? He is still the only cop in Wisconsin -- is this not irresponsible? The whole movie falls apart for me right here, in the final moments.) He tells her he ate her cake. A cake which we just saw two raccoons destroying. Yes, he says he fought them off. (Hilarious in concept but seriously, Annie, if your boyfriend starts foaming at the mouth and developing lockjaw, it's too late for him. Just deal with him Ol' Yeller-style.) There is absolutely no motivation for him to forgive her at the end of the movie. It was almost as if the writers (or perhaps the studio or focus groups or something) realized they were at the end of the movie and thought: "Oh crap! Every woman is incomplete without a man in her life...and our hero has completely alienated the one good man in her life... I know! Let's just have him pick her up at the end of the wedding all romantic-like and we can pretend that the disrespectful way she treated him never happened! Phew. Hahaha can you imagine what would have happened if she didn't end up with a man? Can you say pathetic spinster cat lady?? Hahahahahahaha. Let's go get ourselves vajazzled."
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