I laughed.  So that means it was good, right?  I...guess so.  I think somebody needs to explain comedy films to me, particularly the much-lauded Apatow films (of which I've seen only a few).

I very much looked forward to seeing Hollywood's funniest ladies all lined up and allowed to be funny on their own terms, particularly Kristin Wiig (who co-wrote the film).  I'm also a big Maya Rudolph fan so I enjoyed seeing her doing what she does best--just being that girl that you'd love to hang out with in real life.  The result was...kind of good I guess.  The 'painfully awkward' shtick was done very well with kudos to Rose Byrne.  The gross-out and slapstick stuff was par for the course.  Melissa McCarthy is instrumental for those parts and helps them get the laughs they need.  She also comes in for some much-needed moral centering later on in the film.

Ultimately what this movie proved to me was two-fold.  Kristin Wiig is an amazing actress, but comedies need to be better.  Bridesmaids felt kind of sloppy, structurally.  It was a sketch comedy mixed with romantic comedy blended with a 'loser protagonist finds her passion' plot and a dance music montage at the end.  Seriously, why do all comedies have to have the goofy dance montage at the end?  They're unfunny and weird.

This movie had a lot of really good banter and dialogue and had the potential to be really original, but it wasn't.  It seemed like the standard template for Apatow's other comedies, except they're all girls.  The archetypes are still all in place, the perverted one, the gross one, the innocent/nerdy one etc.  I didn't feel like it had anything particularly interesting to say about life and didn't form a distinctive identity for these women.   Each scene is just 'whatever works'.  I loved how they played up that passive-aggressive girl talk in the first few scenes, but after that it's dropped in favor of everything we've already laughed at before.  Oh, it's funny because she's drunk, oh it's funny because she pooped her pants, oh it's funny because Jon Hamm's being a jerk.  There's little done to try and take the funnies into a different arena, actually exploring more kinds of funny, instead of just putting tried-and-true formulas into skirts.

Interestingly, I was shocked to see none other than Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric's Awesome Show Great Job! in a non-speaking role as Maya's husband 'Dougie' (hahahahaha).  For those who don't know, this man along with his partner Eric Wareheim are certainly the leading forces in avant garde comedy today.  Their show is as disturbing as it is hilarious and impossible to look away from.  The fact that they cast him as in a 'normal guy' non-speaking part seemed an ironic portent of how this film makes mediocrity of folks whose individual work brims with maniacal originality.



And yet, there's a lot to like about Bridesmaids.  It's not short on laughs or good performances.  It just lacks that special something that makes me want to see it again, or even remember it very well.  So maybe all I'm trying to say is that putting funny people together will ensure a funny movie, but not necessarily a good one.  There's a place for structure and careful writing and directing and an overall theme even in a genre as seemingly spontaneous as comedy.  2 examples of watchable comedies with robust direction/thematic depth:

Bottle Rocket (neurotic Gen Xers finding themselves)
Swingers (more neurotic Gen Xers finding themselves)
Shaun of the Dead (the ultimate 'late bloomer coming of age' comedy...with zombies!)

In closing, some Kristin Wiig geniusness: