Film Friday: Bridesmaids (2011)

Bridesmaids was a monster hit in 2011, raking in $288 million. So when it came to HBO, I decided to check it out. How bad could it be, right? You might be surprised. And while humor is subjective and people’s opinions can vary, here’s why you shouldn’t like this film.

** spoiler alert **

Written by Kristen Wiig and produced by Judd Apatow, Bridesmaids is the story of the miserable and unredeeming existence of Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig), an intensely unlikeable woman who has been tasked with planning the wedding of her friend Lillian. . . sort of. The film never pins down her exact role, so I can’t give you more precision, except to say that she’s the maid of honor and she’s supposed to come up with ideas to entertain the bridesmaids. But Lillian has another friend, Helen (Rose Byrne), who seems to be doing the same thing plus whatever else is needed to make the jokes work. The rest of the story is Annie ruining all the wedding preparations as she alienates everyone in her life because she is, for lack of a stronger word, an asshole. Naturally, in a film this poorly written and conceived you know the ending already – it all works out, everyone becomes friends again, and Annie finds the perfect boyfriend.

The first problem with this film, the one which makes it so darn boring, is that it lacks a story arc. All good stories involve an arc, i.e. some journey where the characters begin at one place and make their way to another. This can be a physical journey where they change locations, an achievement journey where they try to accomplish some goal, or an emotional journey where the characters either resolve emotional needs or grow as people. Bridesmaids has no such arc. It thinks it does, but it doesn’t.

What the film thinks it’s doing is taking Annie on an emotional journey where she begins with a messed up life because she’s self-centered and she ends up winning her happiness by becoming a better person. Only, that’s not what really happens. Annie is a character who thrives on nastiness, self-pity, and jealousy. She should be primed for growth, but she never grows. Instead, she goes from scene to scene offending people without ever learning. Yet, the film isn’t smart enough to recognize this failure, so it has the other characters pretend that she’s grown, even though she hasn’t. That makes the whole thing feel faked.

What’s worse, she becomes even more unlikable after she’s supposedly had her epiphany moment. After losing her job, her apartment, her friends and her boyfriend, she finally declares that she has hit bottom. A scene or two later, her nemesis Helen comes to her for help. Helen is very upset that they can’t find the bride, but also begins to pour her heart out to Annie about her own life being miserable, BUT the supposedly reformed Annie mocks her. This was pure cruelty and it made me angry. Oddly, Helen seems to think she deserves to be mocked. Then Lillian forgives her for destroying the wedding shower, her boyfriend forgives her for things she’s done to him, and all the other bridesmaids forgive her for everything. And what has she done to earn this forgiveness? Nothing. They just decide this abusive jerk is someone they can’t live without.

This is nonsense and it’s deeply unsatisfying. This film went through the motions of a story arc to make her a better person, but didn’t bother improving her and yet still acted like she was a new person. This makes the film feel like a rip-off.

But even beyond that, Bridesmaids suffers from an all-too-common problem with Apatow-related films: it’s not funny. And the reason it’s not funny is the way it handles its characters. Specifically, the film is packed with so many whacky characters that they become distracting. In fact, almost every character in the story can be considered a whacky character. Yet none of them pay off.

Whacky characters are comedic gold. But they need to be used correctly. Typically, whacky characters introduce specific traits into a film which then become relevant in the plot at some point. Horrible Bosses and Dinner for Schmucks are excellent examples of this, as both introduced a small number of truly strange characters whose quirks would shape the plot throughout. Bridesmaids doesn’t do this. Annie lives with a freakish, incestuous brother and sister from England. Most of the bridesmaids are oversexed in the extreme. She sleeps with a man who openly uses her for sex. Her mother is crackpot who uses AA as a way to meet people. But not one of these characters ultimately affects the plot. Basically, their wackiness is gratuitous, as these characters are stand-alone jokes whose sole purpose is to show you something wacky. You could actually strip every single one of them out of the film without missing a beat -- compare that to Dinner for Schmucks which ends in a mind-control duel which provides a tremendous payoff for several of the characters. Even worse, these characters aren’t funny. The brother and sister are creepy. The bridesmaids are unoriginal. The mother’s lines are nonsense. They are jokes without a punchline.

The result of this combination of a story without a genuine arc and characters with no purpose except to be self-contained jokes is a movie that isn’t very strong and which relies entirely on the ability of Wiig to pull you in and make you feel the plight of her character. But since her character is malicious and oozes self-pity throughout, there’s little to like. In fact, the only character I truly liked was Annie’s eventual boyfriend, a Wisconsin State Trooper (Chris O’Dowd) who is inexplicably (again with no payoff) from Ireland. His story at least had an arc and his character seemed to have genuine feelings.

In many ways, Bridesmaids reminds me of The Green Hornet. You have a main character who is a total ass with a cruel streak, but we’re supposed to like them just because they’re the lead character. You have an assortment of strange minor characters, but they don’t contribute to the story, their purpose is just to be stand-alone jokes. And you end up with a film which feels flat and unpleasant. Clearly, a lot of people liked this film, but I think it benefitted from name recognition and the dearth of female-led comedies, and I suspect this film will ultimately lack staying power, like so much else associated with Apatow.