Bridesmaids. →

Kat and I caught a press screening of Bridesmaids the other night, and it is pretty fucking funny. After leaving the theater, Kat said, “A lot of the time when I’m coming out of a movie, I’m trying to figure out who it was made for. This one was for me.” It’s not, as Bust points out, a romantic comedy — those aren’t usually very funny, and Bridesmaids is at least as weird and gross as The Hangover. (weird + gross = funny.)

One thing that stood out to me in the Bust review linked above, though, was a comment on what I thought was the funniest scene in the movie — the sure-to-be-famous food poisoning sequence. (Note: the clip in the link cuts off before the action really starts.)

There is a scene in particular where Lil and her bridesmaids get food poisoning that left me cringing, mostly because seeing people vomit makes me wanna vomit too. Is this an example of female comedy trying to keep up or out-gross the boys? There are critics and viewers who will argue that.

And maybe it’s just because I am a dude who thinks that gross-out stuff can be funny, but I actually thought the food poisoning scene was kind of groundbreaking. Because whatever else that scene is about, it is absolutely not about giving anybody a boner. And seeing it like that, you realize just how rare it is to see women in a movie who are decidedly not sexy even a little bit. That’s not a new comment or anything, but it’s definitely in sharp relief in Bridesmaids.

If the movie were otherwise bad, it wouldn’t be worth discussing much. But — aside from being probably 15 minutes too long — it’s really funny and satisfying. And since that — combined with the fact that no studio thought to counter-program it till The Hangover 2 opens in two weeks — means that Bridesmaids is probably gonna be a monster hit, I expect we’ll see people considering this more seriously. And that’s cool, because it’s a conversation that’s been needed for a long time. With our without the puking and pooping.