Bridesmaids

With the whole of the nation going mad for the Inbetweeners movie, I joined a small group of my friends on Wednesday last week to see 'Bridesmaids'. It's been out for quite a long time now, so I was surprised to see that the cinema was probably about 20% full. Maybe loads of people had turned up for The Inbetweeners only to have it be sold out in their faces. I might watch the TV series of Inbetweeners one of these days to see what all the fuss is about. As far as I can tell it's a bunch of shameless crudity, which means I'll probably like it.

Bridesmaids is a comedy. Billed as a sort of female version of 'The Hangover' it stars Kristen Wiig (IMDB insists there's a double-'i' in her surname - she played the Christian weirdo in 'Paul') as Annie, a woman who appears to have failed at life. Her small bakery went bankrupt, she sleeps with an idiot, lives with George Dawes, drives a rust-bucket and - to cap it all - her best friend Lillian is marrying into a rich family. Lillian asks Annie to be her maid of honour at the wedding, a choice that rankles with Lillian's new upper class chum Helen (Rose Byrne). Can you see where the central conflict in this movie's going to be?

Cue comedy. We get some David Brent-esque one-upmanship between Annie and Helen as they each try to prove themselves Lillian's best friend, then some ultra-crudity and toilet humour (shitting yourself in a wedding dress for instance). This isn't exactly typical of what is on the surface a bit of a girlie film; but of course 'Bridesmaids' isn't a girlie film, it's a gross-out comedy with the usual male roles all replaced by women.

And it works. I don't know if it was just the novelty of seeing girls in this genre of film being crude and discussing poo without being pre-occupied by boyfriends, but it's very funny. The ending does slide back slightly into territory normally occupied by female-dominated films about relationships, but overall that kind of slushy stuff is well-avoided in favour of crudity. Nice.