I wish I could write about Bridesmaids (2011, directed by Paul Feig) without writing about the sociological issues surrounding it. In years past, this kind of comedy would have been no big thing. In 2011, its success or failure is a referendum on movies made by, starring, and targeted at women. Which is complete and utter bullshit, by the way. I mean, 51 percent of potential moviegoers are women, guys! This is NOT rocket science. And all those tickets you sold for Titanic and Twilight? Who do you think bought them? But Bridesmaids is being sold with lines like "Chick flicks don't have to suck!" and is being characterized by its gross-out humor (one freaking scene! ONE!), as if they're selling a movie for women to an adolescent male audience. Which, of course, is exactly what they're doing. They don't know any better. They're a bunch of entitled fucking dude-bros in the boardrooms of the movie studios these days. They've transplanted the frat house to the corner office. None of which should have even the slightest relevance to Bridesmaids. But it does, and we're all poorer for it.
It's hard for me to review a movie like Bridesmaids, actually, because all critical standards are suspended for comedies in the face of the one true comedy imperative: Is it funny? I mean, I could write a masters thesis on the patterns of class warfare in this movie, and on the existential plight of the single woman in a society that demands she have a partner, but while that's all well and good, it doesn't matter if the movie doesn't get laughs. And laughs are produced by some weird alchemical process involving personalities and timing that no one can quantify. In the case of Bridesmaids, the ultimate verdict I can render is that it made me laugh more or less consistently. So there's that. That won't stop me from writing about the existential dilemmas of a single woman, of course, but I thought I'd put all that right up front. It's a funny movie.