Review: Bridesmaids
I recently bemoaned how the scatalogical joke was becoming a vehicle for teaching us tiresome moral lessons in films such as Hall Pass. After seeing Bridesmaids, I can say that I needn’t have been so disheartened for this latest Apatovian comedy (notably the first to feature a female protagonist) features one of the finest fecal-fixated scenes of recent times.
A soon-to-be-bride and her ragtag group of bridesmaids are trying on dresses at an elite bridal shop. The women have spent the night before at an unusually cheap Brazilian eatery, the initiative of the bride’s maid of honour Annie (Kristen Wiig) who has fallen on hard times after her cake store went under with the recession. Annie is feeling threatened by the bride’s new friend Helen (Rose Byrne), a pampered member of America’s financial aristocracy who is more than comfortable navigating the peculiar customs of the modern wedding. Helen is about to display her dominance over Annie with her superior knowledge of fashion labels but Annie’s humiliation is sealed when last night’s dinner involuntarily spurts out of every possible orifice of the women’s bodies making its mark on the dazzling whiteness of the bridal shop and the street outside.
One of the strange things to happen because of Bridesmaids is a number of comments from critics and bloggers quick to point out that Bridesmaids is not, in fact, a militant feminist manifesto. Jake Wilson complains that, “Bridesmaids takes some satiric potshots at the American wedding industry, but scarcely qualifies as any kind of feminist statement,” while Thomas Caldwell is similarly disappointed that the film “never really challenges the institution of marriage”. I for one could not imagine anything more boring than a comedy that aims to tell us that marriage is a Bad Thing. The French philosopher Felix Guattari once advised against this kind of reactionary Leftist response:
I don’t see any reason for condemning couples. What matters is how they work. What becomes of the individuals of whom they are composed? What happens to their lives, their emotions, their desires?
Do these feminist critics harbour similar reservations about the films of Yasujiro Ozu? I would say that despite not being “anti-marriage” films, Ozu’s films about families are exceptional because they articulate the uncertainties and complexities of the couple – there are thwarted desires yes, but also joy and tenderness.
All of which is besides the point because Bridesmaids is not really a film about romantic love (though, true to form, Annie finds a man by film’s end). Bridesmaids is a film about social division, specifically about the humiliation of the working class. If most Apatovian comedies come in the form of two men hurling insults at each other with the particular social setting being extraneous, this latest film is of an older comedy tradition – the tradition of Tati’s Monsieur Hulot, Chaplin’s Tramp and even Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean – that uses the figure of the “fool” to articulate the rules and customs of a particular space, what Adrian Martin calls the “social mise en scène”. The social setting is entirely crucial to the operation of a joke in Bridesmaids, whether it’s the high-tech mansion of Annie’s arsehole fuck buddy (Jon Hamm), the otherworldly bridal shop or the commercial airplane whose staff insist on separating Annie from her more financially secure friends.
Bridesmaids is not a film about marriage but about a wedding and the way it reinforces class difference. What is the modern wedding but an occasion for the working classes to completely lose their dignity in pretending to be more affluent than they actually are? Weddings are not expressions of love but rituals with the terms of engagement set by Wills and Kate. What could then be a better image for a comedy about a wedding than that of a bride in an expensive Parisian wedding dress taking a shit in the middle of the street?
Jake Wilson
29/06/11 - 9:09 AM
When I wrote that Bridesmaids barely qualifies as feminist, I meant it as an observation rather than as a complaint. From the class angle (and in other ways) the most interesting character is the one played by Melissa McCarthy, who turns out to be among the wealthiest as well as the most uncouth.
I like the Guattari quote!
Brad Nguyen
29/06/11 - 11:15 AM
Fair enough :)
Perhaps I read too much into that sentence when I encountered those two reviews so close to each other. There’s just this weird thing which happens when a film is not marketed at men, and critics suddenly ask: Is this film feminist enough? It happens each time a Twilight film comes out and it always kind of irritates me.
Zora
29/06/11 - 12:37 PM
But was it funny? I just don’t think I laughed very much. And that’s subjective blah blah blah but talking with people who’ve seen it, I’ve had a lot of ‘yeah, it was good, but I just wanted it to be…better’ reactions, which I share. There was something sloppy and disjointed about the structure too which irked me.
Brad Nguyen
29/06/11 - 12:42 PM
Well, I was laughing consistently throughout and the crowd I saw it with loved it. So you know, differing anecdotal evidence! Perhaps the people you hang around don’t have a sense of humour?
Thomas Caldwell
29/06/11 - 1:08 PM
Hi Brad
Similarly to Jake, I was simply making an observation about Bridesmaids not challenging the institution of marriage. I don’t think I really implied that this somehow disappointed me. In fact, when I spoke about the film elsewhere I talked about how films with a focus on women are sometimes unfairly expected to contain an overt political agenda. So, I’m actually on your side with this!
Cheers
Thomas
Zora
29/06/11 - 1:09 PM
That would certainly seem to explain it, yes.
Brad Nguyen
29/06/11 - 1:23 PM
Thomas – Glad to have you on side. My addition is that not only should a female-centric film not be expected to be anti-marriage. One step further – If the film was overtly anti-marriage it would be a bad film.
Bhakthi
29/06/11 - 8:04 PM
I know you’re not supposed to leave blog comments just saying ‘I agree’, but I do. So there.
Emma Jane McNicol
30/06/11 - 3:16 PM
You are entirely correct ! It is a film about social division.
Also (just interested); did you find the bride-to-be’s face to be quite abbrasive in close ups? It was a serious reminder of to me of how only soft feminine features seem to find their way unto the Hollywood screen.
I did however sense that the film got a bit preachy or very lame at least;
I got pretty annoyed at times when the film suggested that Annie’s savour would be baking or shacking up with the sweet Irishman.
Annie was obviously at her strongest – a proper comedic heroine – when mashed and abusing ‘Stove’ on the plane.
Why do comedies feel the need to refer to this depressive rise and fall mopey phase – is this not when the comedy becomes a ‘rom com’ – where there is the need for that ridiculous “i miss chu” montage etc. It reminds me of the entirely incongruent and bizarre ‘depressive’ phase towards the end of ‘Wedding Crashers’
(I do think the film referred to the single/dysfunctional or in-a-hetero-union/functional dichotomy a bit much)
Brad Nguyen
01/07/11 - 10:39 AM
Nice points, Emma. A friend also suggested to me that this film belongs to a whole series of “female-empowerment-through-baking” films.
Peita
26/07/11 - 5:38 PM
Zora, I have to say that on my own personal humour meter – the laugh snort – Bridesmaids scored a solid 8 out of 10. I was caught a number of times laughing with surprise and so suddenly that laughter and sniff became snort!!
The need for underlying truths, or political agendas also frustrates me. Entertainment need not come with a political bumper sticker and laughter doesn’t need to have substance served with it.
Although if you look at how the film was produced, I would imagine the message is that women that haven’t been ‘airbrushed’ can be funny and entertaining.
Mindblowing stuff really …