DVD Reviews

Bridesmaids (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo) – Blu-ray Review

By Dana Rae Sep 26, 2011, 14:02 GMT

"Gut-bustingly funny. Bridesmaids gets an A!!!" (Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly) From the producer of Superbad, Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin comes the breakout comedy critics are calling "brazenly hysterical!" (Alynda Wheat, People)Thirty-something Annie (Kristen Wiig) has hit a rough patch but finds her life turned completely upside down when she takes on the Maid of Honor role in her best friend Lillian’s (Maya Rudolph) wedding. In way over her ...more

For all the hype made about Bridemaids, I didn’t fall in love with it. I don’t even know if I liked it. The trailers and previewers made it sound like a girlish Hangover, with fun and good times in Vegas.

I was a bit disappointed that we as the audience never saw the characters in Vegas.

Kristen Wiig plays Annie, an insecure 30-something that has faltered in her life. Her bakery Baby Cakes has gone bankrupt and her guy relationships have been reduced to a perpetual one-night stand with sometimes hook-up guy, Ted (played by an uncredited Jon Hamm from Mad Men).

The one bright spot in her life seems to be her best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph, Up All Night). Annie and Lillian have been best friends since childhood and lean on each other through good and bad, and mostly when concerning Annie’s life, the bad.

When Lillian’s wedding becomes the center of activities, and Annie is asked to be her maid of honor, their relationship is put to the test in more ways than one. Annie has to compete with the new friend, Helen (played by Rose Byrne, Insidious).

Helen is seemingly everything that Annie is not: secure, beautiful, in a meaningful marriage, rich, talented.

Things spiral out of control as the plans for the wedding commence and all the traditions began to be fulfilled (toasting the bride at the engagement party, the bride’s shower, the bachelorette party). Annie continues to screw things up.

She hosts a luncheon with all of the braidemaids at a hole-in-the-wall Cuban chicken place and everyone gets food poisoning. The one great idea that she has - a Parisian theme for the shower - is stolen by Helen.

Helen eases her way more and more into taking over until Annie has messed up so badly and is ousted from the festivities. The relationship with Lillian appears to be so broken beyond repair that it can never be fixed.

Annie has an excellent opportunity to prove herself more than Ted’s holler-back girl when she meets a really nice guy, Officer Nathan Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd). However, she manages to mess that one up, too, when he tries to encourage her to bake again (she is a really good baker, apparently).

The movie is funny at times, but it seemed to me to be more of a dramedy than a comedy. At times I found the movie unfunny and a bit pathetic - probably because of Annie’s wishywashiness.  I just wanted to reach through the screen and slap her.

Of course, that is not a criticism of actress Kristen Wiig. It takes a lot of work to create a character that sad and depraved!  And it takes extra work to make such a character funny, but her special brand of toned-down lip-biting insecurity is very comical.

The main comedy elements come from the other brides’ maids, especially Melissa McCarthy (Mike and Molly). She is hilarious as Megan, the “fat” friend. Where Annie lacks confidence, Megan has the raging confidence of a very deluded person. Yet we love her and want more of her, she is that good!

The DVD + Blu-ray plus digital copy  comes loaded with special features, including extended and alternate scenes, a gag reel, deleted scenes, and various extras such as Drunk-O-Rrama and Annie’s Blind Date.

Bridemaids is very entertaining, don’t get me wrong. I just think that the marketing was a bit off and led people to believe that it was going to be a farce without a shred of thought, just turn the brain off and the laughs on. But it isn’t that at all.

It is a dramedy with carefully created characters that might border on genius-inspired renditions of being pitiful. I applaud the ending when the wedding of Lillian’s dreams turned out to be something of a nightmare with Helen at the helm.

Her dress was awful, and Wilson Philips sang their most famous song (How On For One More Day), which is a song about surviving, but hardly wedding singer material!

I would highly recommend Bridesmaids, but understand what kind of movie it is before you start watching and you won’t be disappointed.