I saw
Bridesmaids awhile back, appropriately with a femmefriend, but didn't blog it yet! Not as a "hey, good movie" but because I'm hoping it signals a shift towards better movies about women.
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| Geek visionary Paul Feig & his pioneering stars |
The Sex and the City movies were a good start. They don't represent how I see my female friendships, but I appreciated how they brought women out to the theaters and proved to Hollywood that yes, they can make movies starring women and still make money. They just need to either (a) feature popular subject matter (ie. a popular TV show), or (b) be good.
Bridesmaids is a case of (b) -- a really well written and well directed and well acted movie, with broad appeal, beyond broads. While Sex and the City was the "dress up and go with your girlfriends" movie, Bridesmaids is ungendered. It's a hybrid of a romantic comedy, a girlfriends-fighting movie, and the ultimate boyo genre: the gross out or raunch comedy. Written by two women, brought to you by the raunch king Judd Apatow, and directed by the originator of the geek trend:
Paul Feig.
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| Linsday & Kim: True womance |
Paul Feig!! The creator of one of my all-time fave shows
Freaks and Geeks!! Which also had an excellent female friendship, that evolves into a touching
womance. (You've all seen this series right??!!)
Now, while I lurv La Apatow, and most of the movies attached to the Freaks and Geeks gang --
Virgin,
Pineapple Express,
Knocked Up,
Superbad,
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (when will
Bill get his own feature film?)--I'm not a fan of the actual vomity side of gross out movies. The first hour of Bridesmaids provides toilet humor like you won't believe. But strangely... even the diarrhea scene... the most horrid horrid diarrhea scene ever... it's strangely plot appropriate, and maintains a sort of dignity for our heroine. Even as it HORRIFIES YOU.
Anyway, I'm blathering. Here's what I loved about Bridesmaids:
* It's a female driven movie that is honest to God funny. There's about four major comedic set pieces and they all work. I so love Apatow-style stupid-boy movies because it's so fun to watch a bunch of boys being dumb asses ("
You embarrass yourself!"), but I'm always yearning for movies with women like that. In the movies women are rarely let-loose ridiculous unrealistic funny, they're more
quirky funny.
That's why one of my favorite bad-movies is Head Over Heels about a smart woman with a bunch of dumb roommates--cause the roomies are stupid-boy-movie funny. I want more movies with ridiculous chicks.
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| I think they're watching the hero & heroine have sex in this scene, in his apartment across the street. She comes home to find them passed out on the couch and realizes what happened. "What? You didn't close the blind." |
* While the behavior of the characters is over the top, the basic emotions are realistic. There are different kinds of friendship in it, and I *got* them all, including the baddie's. These are things I've seen in real life--people I've seen, albeit made larger than life.
* It doesn't take place in an orientalist super-consumer fantasy land (though consumerism is one of the topics.)
* While the women are beautiful, they look... interesting. You know that feeling when you're watching a made for TV movie and the actors all have this sort of Generic Look to them? For example, the actor playing the bride,
Maya Rudolph, has one of the most interesting faces I've seen in a longo time-o.
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| generic face |
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| Maya Rudolph |
* Classic example of a character's life
towering, and while the romance of the romantic comedy is fulfilled by the end, kudos to the writers--her life is not magically put back together. Not by a long shot.
* Wee props to the cutie romantic character. Not your typical chiseled chin. He eats baby carrots and is very concerned about tail lights.
Here are the posters from the movie.
So funny. You wanted to be her besty too.
Our protagonist,
Kristen Wiig the co-writer of the movie. So funny. Really good at playing someone who kinda hates herself, but we don't wanna kill her. (Well I didn't.)
The perfidious friend stealer! A baddie worthy of the saccharine fiancée in
Arthur.
If anyone did the Russell Brand style scene stealing, it was Melissa McCarthy. Holy mackinole, I loved her. And now she won't go down in history as the chubby sunshiney girl. "Life is biting you in the ass!" And oh the puppies.
Bottom line: If the humor from movies like 40 Year Old Virgin or Love, Actually is too raunchy for you, then stay away from Bridesmaids. But otherwise, I give thumbs up. ... Well really... it's so good you ought to see it anyway, because the comedic set pieces... my days. But history tells me you'll see it with my brother and your 80 year old stoical mother and later I'll get an email from my brother saying "Why did I rent this movie with dad and gramma what was I thinking??" and I'll write back saying "Ya what were you thinking?" and he'll be all "I forgot about the diarrhea scene, I just remembered how the character grew and learned, and the touching friendships" and I'll be all "Oh ya, I forgot too, but still" and he'll be all "I should stick to movies about dying people" and later I'll mention it to my step-mother and she'll be like "Well it's embarrassing watching these things with Gramma" and I'll think, well fair enough, but secretly lament that my step-mother saw the movie in Oppressive Circumstances because while she doesn't have sex-and-gross sense of humor, she is otherwise totally slapstick-low-brow, so sometimes you get her on her own and she laughs at the worst things I'm telling you, it's hi-lar-ious. So all I'm saying is... if you're going to risk watching the movie, don't watch it with my brother or my grandmother. ...Oh did I go off on a tangent?
