adminClayburgh, Mike Silper, Carnie Wilson.
Director: Paul Feig
Producer: Judd Apatow
Age restriction: Adults only
There may well be a trend a series afoot here. The producer of this film, Brides Maids, was also the producer of the film Knocked Up, which dwelt about an hour too long on the mindless yearnings of a 40 year-old virgin.
The principal reaction of this no longer youthful reviewer to the current film, Brides Maids, is one of shock and disgust. But the success with which this film has been received in America leads me unerringly to the conclusion that it is I, and not the film, who is out of sync with the times.
The chosen setting, to the film’s credit, is the second city, Milwaukee, of the mid-western American State of Wisconsin. It is famous for its indigenous population of badgers; several of whom crawl into and through this film.
Ostensibly a comedy, the film dwells on the lives of Annie, Lillian and Helen, the interlocked trio, members of a sextet of not so young unmarried urban ladies who are moving heaven and earth to alter their marital status. Within the group Annie has made the assumption that it is she who will be the bridesmaid at Lillian’s wedding. When her ability to provide the necessaries tilts the choice towards Helen, the former bonding of the sixsome, thought to be indestructible, comes explosively unstuck.
Helen is a millionaire and it is her ability to upgrade Lillian’s wedding, which is the moviemaker’s tweak of our feelings, that loyalty should dominate. For this reviewer the dominant element of this film one, which has left a very bad taste, is the overwhelming frequent and gratuitous use of the foulest language. An eight year-old, corrected at the table, tells his mother to “F***off.”
The sextet of (are they really) friends belabour each other at every turn, with the “F***off” the most frequent in the script.
While increasingly losing the battle to be Lillian’s maid of honour, Annie becomes increasingly involved with an Irish immigrant who has become a State Patrol officer on the overburdened state’s highways.
This is good for a lot of laughs.
The most off putting element of the film? Showing the six women in scenes of drunken debauchery, defecating, urinating and vomiting, such as I can do without.
Online Reporter