Sunday, May 22, 2011

My Gainesville, Florida, Home

Bridesmaids (2011)
directed by Paul Feig
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Los Feliz 3

Bridesmaids is a very funny movie typified, I think, in the "flight to Vegas" montage. A worse film would be less fair to the two airline attendants that Kristen Wiig confronts, offends, and isolates. Most comedies wouldn't be as tough on Annie in that scene: left alone because she's mean. Funny, but mean. Nor does she re-open her bakery before the final credits, or even get very far with the good-hearted cop. Not much happens at all - Annie isn't the one getting married - except that she loses a friend for a few months, and feels like her life is that much worse for Lillian's absence. Which it is.

Bridesmaids is about loneliness more than thirty-something jitters, and the antidote to too much time with your thoughts and fears is pratfalls, most of the time. I'm projecting way too much, even for this blog, but I like to imagine that Maya Rudolph's relationship with Paul Thomas Anderson is based on things that make them both laugh. Sure, they're beautiful people, but the man who made Punch-Drunk Love deserves a woman like Lillian. Somehow I've managed to bring a guy into this review, which misses Bridesmaids' biggest point completely, but where would we be without each other - in the theater, at the movies, in the dark?