BRIDESMAIDS
Bridesmaids landed like an oestrogen-studded bomb in 2011, blowing apart almost every single assumption about female-fronted comedies. That they were too big a risk. That they wouldn’t make any money. That men wouldn’t buy a ticket (because, ewww, women making jokes). That women would be too busy buying a ticket to the latest romcom, (with the emphasis firmly on rom). Because, you see: women didn’t want to watch funny women; men certainly didn’t want to watch funny women, so what sense would it make to produce a film that relied on both these maxims being dead wrong?
it’s fair to say that cinema oftentimes likes its comfort zone. But Bridesmaids challenged the softness under its arse — even if it did so in the Trojan horse of a ‘wedding movie’. The wedding, as it turned out, was the least important bit of the story, co-written by kristen Wiig and annie Mumolo. annie (Wiig) is doing a job she hates (and which she is terrible at, spectacularly calling one teenage customer “a little cunt”), living in a weird flatshare and attempting a relationship with a fuck-buddy (Jon Hamm) who is all fuck and no buddy. all of which is brought into sharp focus when her best friend lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged.
But it was her fiancé doug who was arguably the one drawn like a cold bowl of porridge. He got just one line — remember it? Us neither — and one awkward dancing-with-anoverbite scene. For this is the story of women; of a beautifully broad and freaky group of women in the bride and bridesmaids of the title, played by ellie kemper, Rose Byrne, Wendi Mclendon-covey and, of course, Melissa Mccarthy.
it was about women’s friendships and hater elationships, in all of their beauty, spite, romance and ugliness. it was honest, dirty, sweary, sweet and out-and-out rank in places. it portrayed women not as fragile objects of purity and grace, but shitting-in-the-street, vomiting-in-the-sink but still full-hearted human beings.
it didn’t drag out the usual cinematic tropes of women who are meant to make you laugh — sardonic and cynical (read: bitter) or full-on raging nuts. But, perhaps most significantly of all, it simply allowed them to be funny. Or rather, provided a platform for them to be funny — there was no “allowing” involved. The message for anyone walking out the screening as Wilson Phillips closed down proceedings was loud and clear: Women. are. Funny. Too.
in the months that followed (after it opened to a $26 million weekend), a landscape that hadn’t been visible before appeared in front of our very eyes as, in the slipstream of Bridesmaids, studios scrambled to have their own female-fronted comedy hits. let’s be clear: not all were successful, but it’s undoubtedly made women’s comedies easier to get financed, greenlit and made. For women to be trusted to write women’s stories in a frank and fucked-up way.
Women of Bridesmaids, we’d go for questionable Brazilian meat with you any day.