Review of Bridesmaids (2011) by Avery D — 25 Apr 2018

When you first see Bridesmaids, an irreverent, wedding-centered rom com about a bitter maid of honor coming to terms with her mess of a life and her best friend's wedding, it is incredibly easy to write it off as just another humorous wedding story. Yet, I wanted to watch it again and again. If I were to only comment on the acting and writing that would almost be enough, as the film was packed with well-set, bright scenes brimming with comedic potential and definitely delivering. The acting delivered was natural and captured many female friendship moments which are often too complex to believably portray. For instance, the slow but eventually complete high-jacking of Annie and Lillian's relationship by Helen was perfectly done, starting out with small, catty attention grabs and escalating to grand gestures and proclamations of Helen and Lillian's newfound friendship. The realism perhaps made it particularly difficult to watch, and all the more satisfying when Annie's friendship with Lillian was re-validated in the end.

However, even besides the great script and acting, this movie finally portrays the story of the rom com "best friend" (a rom com plot many have desperately wanted to see more of) without shouting from the rooftops that it is doing so. Annie is not the typical rom com protagonist by a long shot (remaining jaded and depressed for the majority of the movie), and this movie's back story seems as if it could have been an entirely different rom com, a sunnier prequel with Lillian finding love with her someday husband, confiding constantly in her best friend who owns the bakery down the street. The movie which does exist could be considered a sort of post-apocalyptic version of the that first, more typical rom com. Even though Annie finds love with Rhodes eventually, the main focus and goal of the film is mending her relationship with Lillian. She is the "rom com best friend" and had let her role lapse. While most movies dealing with a sort of "discarded best friend" issue discard the relationship entirely and have the character prove that she can live without the relationship, this one kept it alive, brought its importance to the forefront. It was refreshing, and oddly empowering, to make the love between the rom com protagonist and her best friend the real success story of the movie.