BRIDESMAIDS

Pretty much everything I've red about BRIDESMAIDS turned out to be true.

The film is funny. Sometimes very funny.

Kristen Wiig, who co-wrote and stars, is terrific (as is the entire cast).

Melissa McCarthy almost steals the movie (so does the late great and often underrated Jill Clayburgh).

The gross out scene is out of place in many ways and seems more from one of Judd Apatow's movies (it was suggested by Apatow, one of the producers). And aesthetically it may not work, or is over the top. But in terms of comedy, it makes the movie funnier for a contemporary audience—especially the "youth demographic" as they used to and still say—and in the end is what probably turned what would have been more of a "woman's movie" into a box office hit.

But it's still "a woman's movie" in the sense that the men in it are mostly irrelevant or at least not as important as the women, it is a movie about female friendships, rather rare these days, and it adds one for the feminine side against the countless male buddy gross out comedies of the past decade, by doing something similar, getting a group of female comics who mostly know each other together to make an ensemble flick that showcases their comic chops.

What I didn't see written about it, but what turned out to be true for me and my oldest son (he had seen it before, I saw it this afternoon up in the Berkshires) is, it's the kind of flick where you talk about different scenes later and laugh all over again. We spent at least a good half hour or more regurgitating, as it were, various lines and bits from the film, both of us cracking up. Not a bad thing to have happen these days.

So thanks BRIDESMAIDS for adding a little laughter to the "now" we're living through.