This has more in common with the lesser late 90's/early 2000s Adam Sandler or Farrely Brothers comedies than it does with The Hangover. The Hangover's strength is within its premise; it's a comedic mystery following three knuckleheads trying to figure out what happened to their friend Doug. That plot and the time clock their on drives everything forward, leading to more surprises and elevation of the absurdity, thus elevating the humor. Same thing with Superbad, one night of shenanigans with the endgoal of making it to the party drives the plot and the comedy comes from how the characters react to the craziness.
Bridesmaids TRIES to be something like Judd Apatow's The 40 Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up where it's more character driven, but Paul Fieg going at it alone just doesn't have the chops to pull this story off or the discipline to yell CUT and not just let everyone improvise on and on and on and on. Jokes go on for too long in the way that the filmmakers think the audience will be laughing SOOOO hard that they gotta stretch it out in order to give them to recover (which is always cocky and arrogant. Jokes are about timing, get on with it); there's hardly any escalation with most of the them so they just end up plateau-ing out a lot (i.e. that Speech vs. Speech scene. It had the potential to increase the laughs but just kinda stayed on the same wavelength the whole time), the jokes seemed forced in that "we want to be the next ICONIC dirty joke" way that weren't rooted in character and more in shock value where the other character says something crazy and the main character sits there to go "Oh dear, oh no, this is soooo awkward/gross" that we've seen a million times (the mom blowjob scene, the food poisoning scene, that scene with the little boy, the brother/sister bathing scene), and most importantly of all, the main character of Annie really isn't changing much at all throughout any of this.
There's no real stakes for her in this situation (other than crap she causes for herself), and she really isn't doing much to change the situation other than passive-aggressively being jealous of Helen, who apparently we're supposed to not like but the movie never really gives us a reason to dislike, and just being over all cowardly in not doing a thing to do anything about her situation or how she's feeling about everything. I GUESS her romance with the cop guy is moving her toward making a change and gaining some depth as a relatable person, but he isn't reintroduced back into the story until a good 30 minutes after he's introduced, so it doesn't feel like he's all that integral to what's going on (compare that to, again, 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, where the important characters shared enough screentime together to develop one another. That doesn't happen enough in this film and comes of as redundant). She FINALLY starts to come around at the Hour and 30 Minute mark. That's WAY too long to be stuck with a character like Annie. After the first 20 minutes it's hard to care about her, so if you're gonna have a movie with this kind of heavily flawed/unlikable protagonist, you better start at least planting the seeds of calling them out on their BS a LOT sooner than that, otherwise you'll just check out of the movie before it happens. And that's what happened with me. I just didn't see anything worth liking in Annie to WANT to see her redeemed like the movie wanted me to by the end of it. She was miserable and shallow and self-pitying and excuse-making and I don't understand why anyone would want to continue to be friends with her other than "The Script Says So."
Overall I can dig the idea of a movie like this on paper, but its execution was just flat out BAD. Mean Girls, Clueless, Pitch Perfect (which came out the very next year after this), those are some really good female-heavy comedies. Now and Then even gives the immortal Stand By Me a run for its money. Bridesmaids is nowhere near in the same league as those. Don't accept crap like this just because you feel you HAVE to. Expect better, demand better.
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rmoriarty97
10 years ago
The fact that Annie was pretty much irredeemable was what I liked about it. It left me with the feeling that she would somehow stuff up the new relationship and be back where she was to begin with. THAT'S normal. THAT'S human. We don't all just meet Prince Charming then change into the perfect person. It's a comedy, not a morality tale.
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dwellman21
10 years ago
That's the problem...it's NOT funny (at least not to me because of what I laid out). And they DO try to make her redeemable by the end of it with Melissa McCarthy's character giving her a pep talk and she and Maya Rudolph's character becoming friends again and everyone living basically happily ever after. Now contrast that with the Woody Allen movie that came out 2 years later Blue Jasmine that DOES have a completely irredeemable main character who does indeed end the movie just as badly as she began it. That worked because she was basically the main antagonist, with everyone else overcoming their personal issues that she has a hand in causing to overcome her. Bridesmaids is like if at the end they tried to go "Oh no but she's sorry guys, she totally learned her lesson, so we should all forgive her and all be friends." Yeahhhh no movie, I won't, thank you very much. Again, it just comes down to I never got what positive traits made her worth liking or forgiving in the first place.
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