Review of Girls Trip (2017) by Tim M — 18 Feb 2018

I'm obviously missing something here... how can everyone love this movie except me? Maybe I'm just too old and/or too white to get it. I just did not see anything new, original, or interesting about this movie.

It's a "women behaving badly" film, and it's as tired and worn-out as any of the ones starring men. I did love its pure, unabashed celebration of black culture, especially black women, who need to be celebrated in mainstream media more often.

But beyond that, it's nothing special. Here's why: 1) The characters are archetypes. There is the straight one, the wild one, the professional one, and the glamorous one. The cast is talented and make their characters believable, but I could not buy that these four women were lifelong friends.

They have absolutely nothing in common! 2) The situations are contrived, complete with an acid-trip scene, a bar fight, and a dance off. Only a few of the scenes are even remotely funny, and when they are, it's entirely thanks to the outrageous Tiffany Haddish (where did she come from? I have never heard of her but she is FABULOUS).

3) Oh god, it's soooo long! It's a full two hours and there is no need for all the extra filling (see point 2). 4) The story is totally predictable and follows the same formula of just about every comedy, and suffers in the same ways because of it.

About halfway through, the movie goes left and tries to get serious, and when that happens, the laughs stop and the rest of the runtime is saturated in feel-good schmaltz. Why, WHY can't they just make a funny movie without the characters having to learn something in the end??? Alas, this movie is about as formulaic as you can get, complete with a sugary, banal moral about - you guessed it - the importance of friendship.

"Girls Trip" is funny at times - you'll never look at a grapefruit the same way again - but it ain't the trip I was hoping for.