Comedy in Bridesmaids

Bridesmaids was somewhat of a quintessential movie for me when I was younger. The first time I saw it was during my 11th birthday party. I had a bunch of my friends over for a sleepover and we were trying to decide what movie to watch. One of my older, definitely more grown-up, friends suggested that we watched Bridesmaids. It was, to my knowledge, the first R rated movie that I ever saw, and I thought that it was absolutely hilarious. It was somewhat of your standard “chick flick”, a movie that revolved around women dealing with comedic aspects of their lives. This also was probably my first introduction to SNL because I remember being absolutely obsessed with Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig. While seemingly silly, and often displaying single-dimensional women, this dramatic comedy most certainly qualifies as a meaningful art form in my opinion.
The movie centers around Kristen Wiig’s character, Annie, as she navigates the ins and outs of being her childhood best friend’s maid-of-honor. However Lillie, the bride played by the absolutely hilarious Maya Rudolph, as entered a new realm of adulthood with friends that seem quite different than Annie. Specifically, Annie fight with Lillie’s new friend Helen who seems to one up Annie in almost everything she does. As the story progresses, we learn that many of Annie’s insecurities surrounding Helen and Lillie’s seemingly perfect friendship stem from other parts of her life. The movie evolves into a more heartfelt story about growing up and changing friendships as people enter into adulthood. It also displays a wide array of women that are each flawed in their own way, yet equally as interesting and unique.
While, maybe not as much of one at the beginning, the movie definitely develops into a meaningful art form that perfectly, using elements of satire and irony, shows the challenges of growing up. The main characters all come to realizations by the end, and end up much better off then they were at the beginning. There were a lot of important life lessons that I learned from this movie, and I’m happy that I watched it, even though I may have been too young, with all of my closest childhood friends.