By Michelle Reyes Boon and Dara Poizner
It’s hard to believe it’s been fifteen whole years since Bridesmaids hit our screens and put wedding culture and the wedding industry on blast in a big way. Directed by Paul Feig and written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumulo, Bridesmaids follows a thirtysomething woman named Annie, who’s already going through a tough time when her best friend Lillian announces she’s getting engaged and asks Annie to be her maid of honour. From there, things go very, very badly.
Annie and Lillian, played wonderfully by Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph, are lifelong friends. It’s evident in their ease and silliness with each other, and how Annie knows all the little details of Lillian’s life. Like the curated box of everything Lillian loves in Milwaukee, and trying to plan a bachelorette party at Lillian’s family cottage and a Paris-themed bridal shower. Let it be known: Annie is a mess, but based on how well she knows and how much she loves Lillian, she is more than qualified to be maid of honour.
The film portrays a very relatable stress test in Annie and Lillian’s friendship. They’re at different stages in life, which is already more depth than most female characters in a comedy were afforded at the time. But an especially interesting dynamic is introduced with Helen, Lillian’s beautiful, ultra-wealthy newer friend who wants nothing more than to snatch that MOH title from under Annie’s feet.
Rose Byrne eats (not at the Brazilian steakhouse, of course) in this role. Helen is Annie’s foil, serving as a needling reminder of everything Annie isn’t, i.e., put together. She plans over the top nuptial celebrations like it’s a competitive sport, with the prize being the title of Lillian’s Best Friend, and undermines and even steals Annie’s ideas at every turn. A wedding party horror story.
While we the audience are seething alongside Annie at every single one of Helen’s passive aggressive comments, at their core, both of these women are the same: they just love Lillian sooooo much. A lesser, more misogynist film of this time probably would have ended with Helen with wedding cake smeared all over her face. Instead she’s portrayed with a lot of vulnerability, ugly-crying about her loneliness and her desire for companionship. Yes, Helen is a menace, but her too-muchness and snide comments are all coming from a place of insecurity. And in the end you sympathize with her. Her parties are garish, but they’re her love language!
The love story
Women don’t talk enough about the fact that many of our formative, brain-chemistry-altering heartbreaks are actually friendship breakups. It may seem a bit like a cliche that the Lillian-Annie-Helen triangle plays out against the backdrop of a wedding – the most important experience of a woman’s life – but it does so with good reason. Bridesmaids honours a reality that many of us don’t want to acknowledge: when someone close to you gets married, the social stakes can be very high. Weddings are such a specific test of our relationships. They encourage people to put their friends in a public hierarchy and delegate roles based on trust and perceived competency. It forces people, and specifically women, to confront where they appear to be “falling short.” Can you afford the expensive bridesmaids dress? Can you plan a flawless bachelorette party? Did the bride ask you to give a toast, or did she not? Simply put – do you look like you have your life together?
There are not a lot of men in the film and most of them are plot devices. Exhibit A: it is hard to emphasize just how unimportant Lillian's fiancé is as a character. Lillian is getting married, so logic dictates she must have a fiancé, but do we know even one thing about him? Does he even have a line? Exhibit B: Annie’s hot but obnoxious friend-with-benefits, who is there firstly for laughs and secondly as a manifestation of Annie’s deep self-loathing. I implore you to try and remember that character’s name and not simply refer to him as “Jon Hamm.”
The exception is Officer Rhodes, Annie’s love interest, played very charmingly by Chris O’Dowd. In movies geared towards women, usually the “best friend” is only in the movie to reflect and supplement the protagonist’s romantic journey (Judy Greer has made a whole career out of playing those roles). The romantic subplot in Bridesmaids flips the rom-com trope, in that Annie’s near-miss with Rhodes serves largely to illustrate her shortcomings as a friend: she’s stubborn, she’s too proud, and she’s prone to bottling up her feelings and then lashing out instead of making an effort to communicate. Annie and Rhodes have great chemistry and banter, so you’re happy when she gets the guy – but you’re happier that she gets her best friend back.
15 years on
Against some odds, Bridesmaids was very well received and even earned two Academy Award nominations, which is a lot for a comedy, especially one that doesn’t just pass but practically renders obsolete the Bechdel test. One nod was for Melissa McCarthy’s supporting performance (she lost to Octavia Spencer in The Help) and the other for Best Original Screenplay, which was lost to Woody Allen (noooooooooooo). Hear us out: Wiig and Mumulo could have written Midnight in Paris, but Woody Allen could never have written the line, “There’s a colonial woman on the wing!”.
Despite being written by women, it’s clear that Bridesmaids was produced and marketed by men, because its release was steeped in paternalistic commentary. The actual giant pink text at the top of the official poster reads “CHICK FLICKS DON’T HAVE TO SUCK!” Underneath that, without a hint of irony, the words: “These are smart, funny women!”. Thanks. We know.
“Chick flick” is reductive at the best of times, but when referring to Bridesmaids it’s practically blasphemous. The movie has two very specific things going for it that set it apart, and are hardly hallmarks of a chick flick: how raunchy it is and how poignant it is. One does not work without the other, and that is what elevates Bridesmaids to legendary status. It has big laughs and big feelings; it’s emotionally devastating and it’s famously grotesque. Neither a “women behaving badly” movie or a sappy rom-com-slash-friendship movie, but both at the same time, and greater than the sum of its parts.