Bridesmaids

Produced by Judd Apatow, Bridesmaids follows Kristen Wiig’s Annie as she attempts to fulfill her maid of honor duties for Maya Rudolph’s Lillian – with her ongoing efforts complicated by both a mean-spirited rival (Rose Byrne’s Helen) and her own crumbling personal life. There’s little doubt that Bridesmaids gets off to a wonderfully promising start, as filmmaker Paul Feig, working from Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s screenplay, does a superb job of establishing the friendship between Wiig and Rudolph’s respective characters – with the actors’ palpable chemistry together ensuring that their scenes possess an easy authenticity that proves impossible to resist. It is, as a result, initially easy to overlook the rough-cut feel that’s been hardwired into the proceedings, with Feig’s decision to blanket the thin narrative with overlong and downright needless interludes inevitably wreaking havoc on the movie’s tenuous momentum and ultimately diminishing the impact of the undeniably stellar performances. The inclusion of an almost eye-rollingly melodramatic stretch within the film’s midsection exacerbates the progressively uninvolving atmosphere, and one finally can’t shake the feeling that Bridesmaids would’ve been far, far better off had it been trimmed down to a more manageable running time.

** out of ****