Lets face it. Most movies these days are about as entertaining as watching my cat drag its butt across the kitchen floor. You can’t do much about it except hope that you’ll catch the few good ones when they come around. The problem is that I love movies, so I will frequently go to the theater even if it is to see some hellish piece of cinema like Blood Red Blood 6 in 3D. Its like having your favorite food be pork roll, and being trapped for eternity in a restaurant that gives you every type of pig related food that isn’t pork roll, but I digress.
I decided to see Bridesmaids the other day. Its been out for a few weeks, has gotten generally positive feedback, and has Judd Appatow’s (the patron saint of irreverent comedy) holy name on it, so I figured how bad could it be? Its not that it was a terrible movie...it just wasn’t good.
Written by and starring the SNL veteran Kristen Wiig, the movie follows her character as she prepares for her best friend’s wedding. Simple enough. Wiig made the movie to showcase the talents of female comedians in a predominantly male industry, but after the first half hour of the movie, you realize that they are just trying too hard to not use males. This is the first roadblock that the movie runs into. Jon Hamm of Mad Men fame provides the funniest performance of the movie, but he only appears briefly three times. It just doesn’t feel natural. The creators tried so hard to stick with the “oh man! So many broads!” gimmick that they turn their back on many funnier roads that the plot could have turned onto.
Another fault that the film faces is trying to cram in eight gagillion characters. Film critic Joel Siegel once said something about how the more main characters there are, the likelier a movie is to suck. For instance, Hamlet is about as good as it gets and has 7 main characters. Pirates of the Caribbean 3 has about 11. Bridesmaids crams undeveloped characters down the audiences throat like the waiters at Sonic do with tater tots on Free Tot Day. After the first few cartons, all you can taste is grease.
It does have a few saving graces though. Despite the movie’s flaws, Kristen Wiig carries the movie very well. The main objective of a movie star is to not be loathed by film goers (I’ve always wondered how Cameron Diaz or Rob Schneider get jobs. Seriously, is there anyone who likes these schmucks?), and Wiig accomplishes that and then some. The easy jokes are also pulled off very well. Unexpected bouts of cursing, funny faces, animal humor, and slapstick all get check pluses. This increases its watchability factor from a level of “dung beetles mating” to “well...at least I didn’t have to see any dung beetles mating.”
Overall, Bridesmaids is a chuckle filled movie, but not much more. The way it awkwardly tries to put a heart at the story’s center half way through the movie is akin to Dr. Frankenstein slapping a serial killer’s brain into his monster’s cranium. I’d recommend it for a year-and-a-half from now when Shotime gets the rights to it and strips it 24/7, and you have nothing better to do.
Now I’ll explain the way I rate movies. You have to compare them to things they are similar to. For instance, I would call both The Godfather and Caddyshack four-star movies, but they are both in a completely different league. Its like comparing tiramisu and the McDonald’s Shamrock Shake. Two different takes on perfection. So if we say that Forgetting Sara Marshall is a 4-star adult comedy and Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj is a 1-star, Bridesmaids comes in at 2-stars.
2 out of 4 stars
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