Bridesmaids (2011 film)
American comedy film by Paul Feig From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bridesmaids is a 2011 American comedy film directed by Paul Feig from a screenplay by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, and produced by Judd Apatow, Barry Mendel and Clayton Townsend. It stars Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy and Chris O'Dowd.[6] The film focuses on a woman who experiences a series of misfortunes after being asked to serve as maid of honor for her best friend.
| Bridesmaids | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Paul Feig |
| Written by | |
| Produced by | |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Robert Yeoman |
| Edited by |
|
| Music by | Michael Andrews |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 125 minutes[2] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $32.5 million[3][4] |
| Box office | $306.4 million[5] |
Actresses Mumolo and Wiig wrote the screenplay after the latter was cast in Apatow's comedy Knocked Up (2007), and budgeted at $32.5 million. Upon its opening release in the United States on May 13, 2011, Bridesmaids was a critical and commercial success. The film made $26 million in its opening weekend, eventually earning over $306 million worldwide, and surpassed Knocked Up to become the top-grossing Apatow production to date,[7] and served as a touchstone for discussion about women in comedy.[8][9][10] It has since been cited as among the best comedy films of the 21st century.[11][12][13]
Bridesmaids was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. It received multiple other accolades. In 2012, the film was nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for McCarthy and Best Original Screenplay for Wiig and Mumolo. This made Bridesmaids the first Apatow-produced film to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Plot
Summarize
Perspective
Annie Walker is a young single woman living in Milwaukee. Following the recession, her bakery went out of business, wiping out her savings and resulting in her boyfriend leaving her. Annie has since lost her passion for baking and now works a stressful, underpaid job at a jewelry store and shares an apartment with obnoxious British immigrant siblings Gil and Brynn due to her strained finances. She is in a situationship with a handsome, wealthy, and self-absorbed man named Ted, who does not respect her and uses her as a convenient source of casual sex, though she yearns for a serious relationship with him. The only positive presence in Annie's life is her lifelong best friend, Lillian.
When Lillian becomes engaged to her boyfriend Doug, she asks Annie to be her maid of honor. At the engagement party, Annie meets Lillian's other bridesmaids: Lillian's long-married and cynical cousin Rita, Lillian's naïve newlywed coworker Becca, Doug's raunchy and foul-mouthed but friendly sister Megan, and Helen, the wealthy, snobby trophy wife of Doug's boss. Annie and Helen are immediately at odds. Helen is jealous of Annie's casual attitude, wit, and special friendship with Lillian, and Annie is envious of the polished Helen's classy good taste and how she has her life together. The two become increasingly competitive for Lillian's attention and try to one up each other with wedding planning.
The stark difference in Annie's financial situation causes Annie to feel alienated from Lillian's world and she is stressed on how she will be able to afford to compete with all of the suggestions and activities the very wealthy Helen keeps planning. Helen arranges for private fittings at a high end bridal boutique for the women to go bridesmaid dress shopping, and also pulls strings for a French couture designer to make Lillian's gown in Paris. Annie tries to circumvent expectations to come up with a fancy (read: expensive) brunch before the dress outing by arranging a unique churrascaria lunch at an obscure restaurant and tries to steer the party towards a budget dress option over Helen's $800 designer pick.
Disaster hits when food poisoning violently strikes all of the women (except Helen, who did not deign to eat the churrascaria) with a combination of vomit and diarrhea in the bridal salon. Lillian tries and fails to find a bathroom before she has an epic bowel movement in the street while wearing a wedding dress. The women must pay for the ruined dresses and Helen steps in to order her dress choice for everyone to make things up to the sales woman.
Annie's subsequent suggestion for a bachelorette party at Lillian's parents' lake house is overruled in favor of a Las Vegas trip planned by Helen. Unable to afford a first-class ticket and too proud to allow Helen to pay, Annie books a ticket in economy class. She accepts a sedative and liquor from Helen to alleviate her massive fear of flying, but begins to hallucinate and suffers a paranoid breakdown that culminates in her being apprehended by a U.S. Air Marshal. The plane makes an emergency landing, and the party takes a bus home. Annie apologizes, but Lillian decides it's best if Helen takes over planning the bridal shower and wedding.
Meanwhile, Annie grows closer to Nathan Rhodes, an Irish-American Wisconsin State Patrol Trooper who lets her off without a ticket for broken brake lights. A former regular customer at Annie's bakery and a big fan of her baked goods, he repeatedly encourages her to open a new one, though she is resistant to the idea. After a romantic night together, she abruptly leaves when Nathan surprises her with baking supplies and tries to pressure her into baking him a cake.
Annie is fired from her job after a profanity-laden argument with a teenage customer. After being evicted by her roommates, she moves in with her mother. She travels to Helen's home in Chicago for the extravagant bridal shower, which is Parisian-themed—an idea of Annie's that Helen had previously rejected. When Helen upstages Annie's heartfelt gift by surprising Lillian with a trip to Paris, Annie flies into a rage. She berates Helen and Lillian in a profane tirade and destroys some of the food and decorations. Lillian attempts to calm Annie down, but the two argue and Annie storms out of the shower. Lillian disinvites her from the wedding.
As Annie is driving home, her still-broken taillights result in a car accident. The other driver flees the scene. The responding officer is Nathan, who admonishes her for blowing him off, not fixing her taillights, and not taking responsibility for herself. Ted arrives shortly afterward to give Annie a ride, causing Nathan to storm off in disgust. However, when Ted asks Annie to perform oral sex on him as he drives, she demands to be let out of the car and walks home, leaving him for good.
Megan visits the now-depressed Annie and motivates her with tough love to take control of her life. She bakes, gets her car fixed, and tries to make amends with Nathan, though he ignores her. On the day of the wedding, Helen appears at Annie's mother's house begging for help finding a missing Lillian. Annie reluctantly agrees to assist her. Helen apologizes to Annie, tearfully revealing that while she is sought after for her event planning skills, she does not have any true friends, few women like her, and she feels unsatisfied in her marriage. With some begrudging help from Nathan, Annie and Helen find Lillian hiding out in her own apartment, having become overwhelmed by Helen's extravagant wedding planning and afraid of leaving her life in Milwaukee. Annie reconciles with Lillian and resumes her role as maid of honor.
After the wedding, Annie and Helen share a hug. Nathan then arrives unexpectedly to pick up Annie. Annie and Nathan kiss, and they then ride away in Nathan's police car.
Cast
Summarize
Perspective
- Kristen Wiig as Annie Walker
- Maya Rudolph as Lillian Donovan
- Rose Byrne as Helen Harris III
- Melissa McCarthy as Megan Price
- Wendi McLendon-Covey as Rita
- Ellie Kemper as Becca
- Chris O'Dowd as Officer Nathan Rhodes
- Jill Clayburgh as Judy Walker
- Matt Lucas as Gil
- Rebel Wilson as Brynn
- Michael Hitchcock as Don
- Tim Heidecker as Douglas "Doug/Dougie" Price
- Ben Falcone as Air Marshall Jon
- Dana Powell as Flight Attendant Claire
- Mitch Silpa as Flight Attendant Steve
- Terry Crews as Rodney
- Jillian Bell as Girl at Shower
- Franklyn Ajaye as Lillian's father
- Matt Bennett as Helen's Stepson
- Greg Tuculescu as Kevin
- Jon Hamm as Ted
The cast features brief appearances by several actors from the television series The Office, including Jessica St. Clair, Nancy Carell, Hugh Dane and Andy Buckley.[14]
Major uncredited appearances include: Jon Hamm as Ted, Annie's sex buddy;[15] Grammy Award-winning accordionist, pianist, and composer Nick Ariondo as the accordion player;[16] and Emmy, Drama Desk and Grammy Award winner Pat Carroll as the old woman in the car.[17]
The film's co-writers, Wiig and Annie Mumolo, appear together when Mumolo plays the credited role of Nervous Woman on Plane,[18] while the film's director, Paul Feig, appears uncredited as one of the wedding guests.
Paul Rudd was to appear as a man who Annie goes on a blind date with, but the scene was cut from the final film.[19]
Mia Rose Frampton appears briefly as a thirteen-year-old girl who argues with Annie in the jewelry store; the film's Blu-ray release includes an extended, ten minute scene of improvised dialogue between the two.[20]
Production
Summarize
Perspective
Writing
It was only after the movie was completed that anyone said this had any significance. We didn't think it was any different than something like The House Bunny or Baby Mama. So we didn't think we were breaking any new ground. We just thought it was a fun thing to do.
—Producer Judd Apatow[21]
The script, originally titled Maid of Honor, was written by actress and screenwriter Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig.[21] Friends for years, they met at The Groundlings, a Los Angeles-based improvisational comedy troupe where they wrote sketches with one another, in the early 2000s.[21] The basic premise for the film originated in 2006, shortly after Wiig was cast in the supporting role of a passive-aggressive cable television executive in producer Judd Apatow's comedy film Knocked Up (2007).[21] Recognizing her comedic talent, Apatow asked Wiig if she had any ideas for a screenplay herself – a practice which had previously led to Steve Carell's idea for The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) – and she and Mumolo soon came up with Bridesmaids.[21] Over the following years, writing commenced, with Wiig working on Saturday Night Live in New York City and Mumolo grinding out the script in Los Angeles.[22] The two would meet on weekends and conduct semi-regular table reads of drafts for Apatow to get his suggestions and notes.[21] Filmmaker Paul Feig came across Wiig and Mumolo's script in 2007.[23] When Feig signed on as director and the script got the greenlight for production in 2010, Feig said, "There was an edict from Hollywood where they were all going, 'Okay this is a movie starring a bunch of women. If this works, we'll greenlight more, and if it doesn't, we won't...I was really sweating because if this didn't work then I'm basically the man who killed movies for women for eternity. So, thank God it worked."[23]
Casting and filming
Several actresses auditioned for the role of Megan, including Rebel Wilson and Busy Philipps, the latter of whom had worked with Apatow and Feig on their comedy-drama television series Freaks and Geeks.[24] Wilson, who improvised for Apatow and Feig for an hour during her audition, impressed them so much that she was later cast in the smaller role of Brynn. It marked her first appearance in an American production,[25] and she allegedly received $3,500, all of which went toward paying fees to join the Screen Actors Guild.[26] Mindy Kaling read for the role of Lillian, eventually losing to Wiig's Saturday Night Live colleague Maya Rudolph.[27] Rose Byrne initially also auditioned for Lillian, but later took the opportunity to read Helen.[28] Byrne was eventually chosen as the nemesis because she wasn't a comedian as Feig feared the character would be "coming out to be too arch if we had a funny woman doing it."[29] Greta Gerwig and Judy Greer also auditioned for unspecified roles.[30][31]
Bridesmaids was budgeted at $32.5 million.[32] Though primarily set in Milwaukee and Chicago, principal photography actually took place in Los Angeles, California.[33] Production designer Jefferson Sage, who has worked with Apatow and Paul Feig since their Freaks and Geeks days, noted that the first fact that appealed to him about the project "was that you had these two disparate worlds: There was Annie's world in Milwaukee, and then there was Helen's world in Chicago. It immediately drew this dichotomy between the rivalry that developed between them."[33] However, Sage acknowledged that it was a challenge to find "architecture that would give us those Midwestern worlds. Chicago is a beautiful, distinctive city architecturally, and restricted views of downtown L.A. feel like Chicago."[33] The production decided to use the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden as the location for Lillian and Dougie's wedding.[33] Additional scenes where Annie meets Officer Rhodes on the highways between Milwaukee and Chicago were filmed in Oxnard, California, which Sage described as a "broad, flat, green area away from mountains."[33]
Reception
Summarize
Perspective
Critical response
.jpg)
Bridesmaids received positive reviews upon its release, with praise towards Wiig and Mumolo's screenplay and McCarthy's performance. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 89% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 294 reviews, with an average score of 7.50/10. The site's critical consensus states: "A marriage of genuine characters, gross out gags, and pathos, Bridesmaids is a female-driven comedy that refuses to be boxed in as Kristen Wiig emerges as a real star."[8] Metacritic gives the film a score of 75 out of 100 based on reviews from 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[34] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[35]
Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars of out 4, and said that Bridesmaids "seems to be a more or less deliberate attempt to cross the Chick Flick with the Raunch Comedy. It definitely proves that women are the equal of men in vulgarity, sexual frankness, lust, vulnerability, overdrinking and insecurity ... Love him or not, Judd Apatow is consistently involved with movies that connect with audiences."[36]
Tamara Winfrey-Harris noted in Ms. that, to her "enduring surprise", despite the involvement of Apatow, and themes that had been "done and done and done", the film passed the Bechdel test of female-driven storylines.[37]
Critic Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly pointed out the significance of Bridesmaids' success as follows: "So far, the message that Hollywood seems to have taken from the incredible success of Bridesmaids is a predictably reductive one, something along the lines of: Hey, look! Raunchy comedies for women with awesome grossout scenes in the middle of them can be big box office too!! The message that Hollywood should be taking is: A comedy that's raunchy and fearless, and also brilliantly written and shrewdly honest about what's really going on in women's lives, may actually connect with the fabled non-teenage audience (remember them?)."[38]
Many critics, like Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon (who called Bridesmaids the "first black president of female-driven comedies"[39]) labeled the film as "a breakthrough for female-centered comedy, and feminist to boot."[40] It was also credited with proving that "women could pull off a good fart joke as well as the next guy, and did what seemed like the impossible: leading an all-female cast to blockbuster success."[41]
Despite the majority of praise, the film was not without its detractors. Abby Koenig of The Houston Press enjoyed Kristen Wiig's comedic talents, but disliked the frequency of "raunchy jokes" throughout the film, writing that "we need more funny females getting the spotlight. However, we also need women that can crack you up without making you watch them have diarrhea".[42] Karina Longworth of The Village Voice criticised the inconsistency of the film's tone, stating that certain scenes have "a kind of dumb crassness that works against Bridesmaids' often smart, highly class-conscious deconstruction of female friendship and competition. Comedy of humiliation is one thing; a fat lady shitting in a sink is another."[43]
Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson has stated that he is a big fan of the film and also putting it on his favorite films.[44]
Box office
Bridesmaids surpassed Knocked Up to become the top-grossing Judd Apatow production to date,[45][46] grossing $26,247,410 on its opening weekend and settling for a strong second place behind Thor.[4][47] Bridesmaids grossed $169,106,725 at the North American domestic box office and $137,335,360 in international markets, totalling $306,442,085.[4] Universal reported that males made up 33 percent of the movie's audience and that 63 percent of the audience was over the age of 30.[47][48]
Accolades
McCarthy was nominated for the 2011 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.[49][50][51]
Home media
Bridesmaids was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in theatrical (125 minutes) and unrated (130 minutes) versions on September 20, 2011.[73] Special features include a Line-O-Rama (a feature popular among Apatow releases), deleted, extended, and alternate scenes, and a Cholodecki's jewelry store commercial. Another edition commemorating the 100th anniversary of Universal Studios was released on September 4, 2012.
Previously proposed sequel
In January 2012, industry sources reported that Universal was interested in developing a sequel to Bridesmaids. When discussing the potential of a Bridesmaids 2, producer Apatow was quoted as saying, "The key is we have to come up with an idea that is as good or better than the first one."[74] In an interview with Vanity Fair, director Paul Feig addressed rumors of a sequel, saying "Everyone's very busy right now is one of the problems, and kind of doing their own thing, but we're very open to it."[75]
When asked about her potential involvement, Wiig told The Hollywood Reporter, "We aren't working on that. Annie [Mumolo] and I aren't planning a sequel. We are writing something else."[74] Following Wiig's statement, reports surfaced that Universal was interested in proceeding without her, instead focusing on developing a story about McCarthy's character Megan. McCarthy dispelled the rumors that she would consider returning for a sequel without Wiig saying, "God, I wouldn't want to. I would never want to. I think it's a terrible idea. I don't know anything about it. But I know that nobody wants to do it unless it's great. If it is, I will show up wherever those ladies are."[76]
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.