Film review: Bridesmaids

IT WOULD be a major mistake to file Bridesmaids away as merely a high quality chick flick. Such faint praise just isn't worth a damn.

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IT WOULD be a major mistake to file Bridesmaids away as merely a high quality chick flick. Such faint praise just isn't worth a damn.

No, irrespective of its non-blokey pedigree, Bridesmaids is a laugh riot par excellence.

Could this be the best mainstream movie comedy of 2011? Perhaps not. But any possible challengers will have a lot of ground to make up to get past this gut-busting effort.

I caught Bridesmaids the evening after I saw The Hangover Part II. On a head-to-head comparison, there was just no contest.

Bridesmaids got more laughs, bigger laughs and, dare I say it, fresher laughs than that happy-to-give-you-more-of-the-same sequel currently blitzing the nation's box-office.

Co-produced by comedy supremo Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin), Bridesmaids raises the female-raunch factor to a level that will make many a male blush.

However, there is a universal appeal to the story that obliterates any audience division along gender lines.

Put simply, this movie has a soulful self-awareness breaking loose right behind the broad gags.

Yes, there are poop jokes. But there is also pathos.

Kristen Wiig, who co-wrote the sharply sculpted screenplay, also plays the starring role of Annie, a woman in her 30s trying her best to ignore the fact that the world has passed her by.

Meanwhile, the world is doing its best to remind Annie it could be about to lap her all over again.

Her boyfriend (Jon Hamm) is a sleaze who'd rather not be seen with her in broad daylight. Her bakery business went belly-up, and now she works the counter in a jewellery store. And Annie shares an apartment with two overweight Brits (Little Britain's Matt Lucas and Australia's Rebel Wilson) on the verge of squeezing her out.

Can things get any worse? Of course they can. Annie has been appointed maid-of-honour to her soon-to-be-married BFF Lillian (Maya Rudolph) and the task may be beyond her.

Especially with Lillian's new friend Helen (Rose Byrne) on the scene - a cultured, coutured rich bitch who uses every passive-aggressive trick in the book to make Annie look daggy, dopey and deranged.

Much of Bridesmaids is used up running through the rituals of preparing for a wedding, with each new phase leaving Annie looking all the more run down.

You name it - the dress fitting, the bachelorette party, the bridal shower - and Annie will have made a mess of it. Sometimes with the aid of the rest of Lillian's rag-tag posse of bridesmaids, led from the front by the big-hearted and bizarre sister of the groom, Megan (a breakout display by a very amusing Melissa McCarthy).

Unusually (though not for an Apatow-connected work), the running time of Bridesmaids stretches out beyond the two-hour mark. However, it must be said that not a single minute is wasted, such is the vivid manner in which its characters burst to life.

None more so than Annie, played to perfection by Wiig, a skilled comedic performer with the rare knack of allowing silliness and sadness to play out in the same scene (check out Annie's painful meltdown at the bridal shower).

Under the unfussed direction of Paul Feig, Bridesmaids delivers more than it should to lovers of great comedy, who will appreciate the movie's winning blend of low-brow broadsides and high-end farce. Even the inevitable happy ending is handled much more cleverly than it had to be.

A great effort all round, with so much going on that many will want to take a repeat walk down the aisle.

VISIT bridesmaidsmovie.com

Bridesmaids (MA15+)
Star rating: * * * *
Director: Paul Feig (Unaccompanied Minors)
Starring: Kristen Wiig, Rose Byrne, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, Jon Hamm
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Losing the plot before tying the knot