When I heard Judd Apatow was producing a movie starring Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph my first thought was, sign me up ! I was especially excited about the film because Paul Feig, who was one of the geniuses behind the cult classic Freaks and Geeks , directed. Seeing the trailer for the movie, called Bridesmaids , is making me reconsider. It seems like a less-fun version of the 2009 blockbuster The Hangover : Wiig plays the maid of honor to Maya Rudolph’s bride, and the two of them along with a cast of other bawdy bridesmaids (including The Office ‘s Ellie Kemper) head to Vegas for a drug-addled romp. Fart jokes abound! But so do tired cliches about single women.
When Wiig’s character, Annie, finds out her best friend is getting married, she starts swigging liquor straight from the bottle. Then there is a recurring sight gag in which people keep mistaking old and gross guys for Annie’s boyfriend, much to her embarrassment. There’s also a character, played by Melissa McCarthy, whose size is played for laughs. Because she is larger than everyone else, she is portrayed as the most masculine and suggests that the bachelorette party involve a “fight club”-style scenario in which they beat the crap out of the bride. In The Hangover , there was no anxiety about singledom, size or anything else-just pure, debauched joy. I’m such a fan of Apatow, Rudolph, and Wiig, I will still see this movie and reserve final judgment until I do. But this trailer is anything but promising .
