The Chris Moeller Archives

Finally a Bridesmaid

Do yourself-- and all of us-- a favor, and rush out to see “Bridesmaids” at your local movie theater. The Kristen Wiig vehicle (co-written by and starring) is very funny, and it’s also what we would call "character-rich."

These are dark days at the cineplex (no pun intended). The studio corporations make primarily two types of movies-- comedy/action flicks aimed at Friday and Saturday night audiences of teenage boys, and insipid, badly-written romantic comedies about one-dimensional women and their bland boyfriends. The presentation of women of complexity, sadly, is left to the almost exclusive domain of television. Complicated women are rarer on the big screen than a Terrence Malick release.

It’s “the chicken and the egg” as far as women staying away from the movies that are aimed at them. Do women not go to movies because the ones made for them are so bad, or are they bad because women don't go to movies? (There were only about seven other movies playing at the theater that I attended today and two of them were called "Something Borrowed" and "Jumping the Broom"-- oh, wedding season.)

One thing we know for certain is that too many men and boys show no interest at all in sitting through anything on the big screen that they perceive as even the slightest bit “feminine.” In a recent New Yorker piece, reporter Tad Friend spoke an unfortunate truth that “Studio executives believe that male moviegoers would rather prep for a colonoscopy than experience a woman’s point of view, particularly if that woman drinks or swears or has a great job or an orgasm.”

That’s why it’s your civic duty-- Y chromosome or not-- to patronize “Bridesmaids,” especially during the all-important opening weekend, if possible. Wiig's "Saturday Night Live" characters don't blow me away, but I've found her appealing in many projects, and never more so than here with her Liz Lemon-y imperfections and her wild foolishness. The "Support 'Bridesmaids'" movement is gaining traction, too. Salon and Slate both have stories this weekend in respect to the cultural importance of the film doing ace box office. Take your friends to see it, and for Christ's sake, take your sons. It pains me as an American, a human, and a heterosexual, to think that the latest batch of boys in this country prefer seeing mythological Asgardian warriors in 3D, or Vin Diesel crashing a bus, to watching beautiful women be funny and charming.

posted by CM @ 7:21 PM