Flashes of Quincy

Bridesmaids

What struck me about Bridesmaids was that it was very sad. Based on everything I’d read or been told about the movie, I was expecting a ribald, sentimental film about female camaraderie, like an estrogen-infused version of The Hangover. There were moments when I laughed, like the competitive speech tradeoff pictured above, but I laughed a lot less than I thought, and at times I felt downright despair. I think that’s because Bridesmaids isn’t really about weddings or friendship, although it is somewhat about the latter. To me at least, Bridesmaids is really about money, and how wealth and status determine who your friends are, as well as whom you want your friends to be. The movie tries valiantly to end on a message of “friendship will always supersede finance.” But there’s a tacit acknowledgment that Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph’s friendship has faded, and that they depart on divergent courses: Wiig to a quaint, lower-middle class future with a cop, and Rudolph to a limo with her fat, six-figure-pulling frat boy. 

The movie’s success doesn’t mystify me: There’s a scene with a bunch of women vomiting and shitting in a rarefied bridal gown shop, a scene that says as much about America’s inexorable fondness for toilet humor as it does about what the film’s creators think about fashion and money. And the press pitch is a great hook, a frat-guy comedy for the sorority set, though such gender binaries shouldn’t have any part of it in the first place. But the fact that most people told me Bridesmaids was a funny, feel-good movie says as much about the audience as the film itself, seemingly unaware of money’s ultimately destructive impact on everything ego.

NB: The film’s portrayal of Chicago’s yuppieish, cultureless fraternity set was brutally accurate, especially when a group of boring bigmouths loudly toast to “rockin’ sushi” on Saturday nights, the type of gluttonous idiocy that is, regrettably, all too common around here.

CORRECTION: Thanks to Jonathan Bogart for pointing out an error. I wrote “Kristen Schaal and Rachel Dratch” when I meant to say “Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph.” Not sure how that happened, except that I might not have had enough coffee this morning.