It’s been a recent trend for female comedians and actors to bemoan the gender culture of studio Hollywood. Not to say that moviemaking hasn’t always had a male-dominated power structure, with male-centric stories, but for some reason there’s been a lot of welcomed questioning lately regarding female characterizations (see this Natalie Portman interview). Girls and women in studio movies often lack the depth and relatability of their male counterparts; an example Portman references in that interview, Devil Wears Prada, appears to present a strong female lead but her success is undermined by femininity (especially its location in fashion). Even Judd Apatow's previous movies don't allow women characters to be in on the joke. Although Bridesmaids’s protagonist (played by a superbly balanced Kristen Wiig) is a pastry chef, a traditional homemaker-like career path, she’s otherwise one of the only female characters in recent memory to refuse female conventions while maintaining a strong sense of relatability.
Bridesmaids is hilarious. It’s as good as Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, and somehow manages to incorporate the best of all of its talent. Apatow’s production and oversight is certainly palpable, particularly in the film’s structure (sex scene, sadness, failure, isolation, self-alienation, some good drunk scenes, epiphany, everyone comes together at the end). But Paul Feig, the film’s director (known for creating Feaks and Geeks back in the 90’s and also for directing episodes of some of the best television comedies since: The Office, 30 Rock, Arrested Development, and Bored to Death, to name a few), has incorporated his television experience and eye for scene development into an efficient yet cinematic film. That is to say, individual scenes (I’m thinking of the one where Kristen Wiig gets inebriated on a plane) feel like they could have been a threaded storyline in a sitcom, but are done so epically that it is actually very movie-like.
