Why are there so few female-driven comedies? Is it all down to gender stereotyping? Whatever the answer to that conundrum, in Bridesmaids, Saturday Night Live regular Kristen Wiig, Freaks And Geeks writer Paul Feig and Judd Apatow finally mange to break down the Madonna/Whore complex Hollywood so often seems incapable of rising above in its treatment of women.
In a film where men play the sidekick romantic interests, Bridesmaids allows its female leads to be smart, sexy, hilarious and loveable, even while humiliating themselves, drinking heavily, stealing puppies or suffering a bad case of diarrhoea (admittedly some of the ‘sexy’ disappears at that point.)
Wiig plays Annie, a woman whose career and love-life are slowly circling the drain, and whose mood isn’t helped when best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) announces her engagement. Smiling through jealously gritted teeth, Annie’s stretched even further to the limit when the irritatingly perfect Helen (Rose Byrne) threatens to usurp her role as Lillian’s best friend and Maid of Honour.
There’s a touch of Team America’s projectile vomit sequence about many of Annie’s increasingly OTT faux pas, which range from a completely cringe-worthy war of the speeches between herself and Lillian, to getting a bad case of food poisoning during a dress-fitting. As emotional words and excrement flow for longer than you might have imagined possible, Bridesmaids becomes the kind of squirm-inducingly funny comedy that only works if you truly care about the characters.
And you do. Outrageous gross-out humour aside, Wiig’s writing is filled with brilliantly perceptive touches that show the insecurities plaguing women’s relationships with both their buddies and boyfriends. From Annie’s damaged self-esteem causing her to be wary in the face of a new love interest (a charmingly understated Chris O’Dowd), to Lillian’s frustrated screams of “Why can’t you be happy for me and then go home and talk about me behind my back like a normal person?”, to everyone’s habit of making tumbleweed-summoning ‘ironic’ jokes about their disastrous lives, Bridesmaids brings the smarts along with the sass.
It’s the only wedding party worth crashing this summer.