Bridesmaids isn’t directed by Judd Apatow, the reigning champion of American comedy, but it might as well be.
Bridesmaids isn’t directed by Judd Apatow, the reigning champion of American comedy, but it might as well be. In addition to establishing himself as Hollywood’s leading comedy director — The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People — he is the industry’s most prolific auteur producer, having overseen a string of recent hits including Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek.
Apatow’s films generally have a freewheeling, loosey-goosey atmosphere, as though we’re eavesdropping on a group of comedians riffing off each other rather than watching a bunch of actors reciting their lines, and some of the best scenes give the impression of having been made up on the spot. Yet, at the same time, they usually contain three or four comic set pieces that have been engineered with a Wodehousian precision. What distinguishes his best films from the standard Hollywood fare is the depth of feeling they’re able to invoke. Apatow’s easygoing naturalism, as well as his skill at creating characters, makes his protagonists unusually plausible. They’re not just wind-up toys let loose in a comic mousetrap; they’re flesh and blood. We feel their pain and we want them to be happy.
Bridesmaids (directed by Paul Feig) is the first time Apatow has applied this formula to a chick flick and the result is an unqualified success. Kristen Wiig plays Annie, a single woman in her 30s whose best friend, Lillian, is getting married. This provokes a crisis in Annie’s life, not least because her bakery business has just gone bust and she’s involved in an unsatisfactory, no-strings relationship with a Porsche-driving narcissist. The plot centres on Annie’s escalating rivalry with Helen, the picture-perfect wife of Lillian’s fiancé’s boss, who gradually wrests control of the wedding preparations.
Some may find the humour a little coarse. The script is credited to Wiig and Annie Mumolo and, as in Apatow’s male comedies, there are several scenes in which the protagonists sit around engaging in crude sexual banter. For instance, the first time we see Annie and Lillian together Annie has just come from her boyfriend’s house and she does an impression of his penis. She shuts one eye and turns her head to one side, invading Lillian’s space as if demanding to be attended to. Personally, I found it very funny, though I wasn’t laughing as hard as the women in the audience. When female comedians talk as frankly as this about sex it can seem slightly forced, as though they’re setting out to shock, and there’s often a political subtext, as in The Vagina Monologues. But not here. On the contrary, it feels entirely natural.
The big comic set piece involves Annie and the other bridesmaids visiting a chi-chi bridal-gown shop after eating a large Brazilian meal. They have to be buzzed in by a prissy shop assistant — you can’t just walk in off the street — and the dresses they try on are all ludicrously expensive. The interior is a sea of white crinoline. Suddenly, one of the women feels sick and rushes to the bathroom, followed by another, then another. It turns out they’re suffering from acute food poisoning and before long they’re erupting from every orifice. ‘Oh my God,’ exclaims one while perched on a bathroom sink, her dress hitched up around her waist. ‘It’s coming out of me like lava.’
As I say, this brand of gross-out humour may not be to everyone’s taste, but most people in the audience were crying with laughter, including me.
One of the most appealing things about Bridesmaids is the number of Brits in the cast. Apatow seems to really get British humour — and appreciate British comics — in a way that’s quite rare in Hollywood. One of the factors contributing to Annie’s misery are her ghastly English flatmates played by Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson. Their complete immersion in the sexual depravity of Chicago is too much, even for Annie. Then there’s Chris O’Dowd, who plays an Irish highway patrolman. The subplot of Bridesmaids involves Annie’s burgeoning romance with Officer Rhodes and O’Dowd is so charming in the role he’s bound to become a star. This is one of those career-changing performances that is a pleasure to witness, like Russell Brand’s turn as Aldous Snow in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Kristen Wiig deserves much of the credit for Bridesmaids, but the laurels belong to Judd Apatow. He is the Billy Wilder of contemporary Hollywood and Bridesmaids is his Some Like It Hot.
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