(Guest post by Kyle Smith)
It’ll be really interesting to see how audiences respond to the Judd Apatow-produced “Bridesmaids,” the new comedy opening May 13. It’s about as far from standard chick-flick fare like “Maid in Manhattan,” “Pretty Woman” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary” as “Knocked Up” is from a Cary Grant movie.
Kristen Wiig stars in, and co-wrote, a movie about women who get mistreated by guys (without the promise of eventually marrying a rich, handsome one) and themselves have lots of issues that aren’t the normal romcom stuff like having one too many drinkies once in a while or being three pounds overweight.
Wiig’s character is a failed baker whose shop went bankrupt and is now forced to work as the world’s worst jewelry-store sales clerk. She has two awful roommates (one of whom doesn’t even pay rent) and her sort-of boyfriend (Jon Hamm) treats her like an unpaid hooker.
She and the other bridesmaids preparing for a friend’s wedding suffer numerous indignities and one of them is morbidly obese. And Wiig’s character acts obnoxious bordering on insane during the bachelorette party and shower.
Partly because of all these unusual factors, the movie packs plenty of comedy potential but comes just a little bit too close to the truth for someone who would prefer to think that Richard Gere is going to appear and take her shopping on Rodeo Drive any minute now. If this film succeeds, it’ll mean the audience really has changed.
(Photo: (L to R) Melissa McCarthy, Ellie Kemper, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig in “Bridesmaids.” In the comedy, Wiig stars as Annie, a maid of honor whose life unravels as she leads her best friend, Lillian (Rudolph), and a group of colorful bridesmaids on a wild ride down the road to matrimony. Photo Credit: Suzanne Hanover. Copyright: © 2011 Universal Studios.)
(Kyle Smith reviews films for The New York Post and runs the essential movie blog KyleSmithOnline.com)
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
As the target market for this movie, I just pray it’s as far from dreck like “Eat, Pray, Love” as possible. I like Apatow movies, not phony, Harlequin Romance stories where gorgeous women can’t find a man. Bring on the raunch!
I don’t actually think I’ve ever watched all of any Judd Apatow movie other than Fun With Dick & Jane (which deliberately juxtaposed Enron with Bush’s election), but a quick look at imdb reveals he’s responsible for Walk Hard and Talladega Nights, which is one movie, made twice, that consists of Will Farrell doing a minstrel-show about how stupid and contemptible flyover country is.
I find that in order to make a decent romantic comedy—and I’m an anime fan, I’ve seen rom-com raunch that’d make your heads spin—one must actually be capable of love or human feelings. But, as Apatow has willingly worked with Will Ferrell on three separate occasions (he also made Anchorman, which at least isn’t pure hate), plainly he’s completely dead inside. I mean, think about it: would you rather subject your fellow humans to Ferrell’s most-overpaid-in-Hollywood smirk, or eat a boiled onion in a gulag? A person with a soul would choose the gulag.
If it’s funny, and they don’t go overboard on the gross-out humor, then I’m fine with an irreverent take on being a bridesmaid. It looks like plays into the whole women-can-be-just-as-bad-as-men mentality (embrace your inner Tucker Max!).
As thebutlerdidit mentioned, rom-coms where the woman is nearly perfect – beautiful, successful, etc – but just needs a man who can handle all this are as tiresome as they are unrealistic.
This movie sounds really, really cynical and sordid, like one of those jaded Yuppie movies critics love but whose point, if they can be said to have one, is “God is dead, and we have killed him, but we are not worthy of the grandeur of the deed”.
Yes I quote Nietzsche about romantic comedy, who doesn’t?
I like a little raunchy comedy as much as the next person, probably more than many people, but it’s gotta have heart—I mean, hell, I find “Clerks” easier to take than “My Best Friend’s Wedding”, just because Clerks is more “bitter and acerbic about people’s crap” than it is “cynical and nihilistic about people being anything other than crap”.