New 'Ghostbusters' Reboot is Disappointingly Mild

It would have been sweet justice if the new Ghostbusters were really terrific, because its very existence received such vehement criticism from devoted fans of the original film, taking to the Internet—even before the movie was released—to voice their outrage that director Paul Feig was casting four women to fill the shoes of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson. But I’d like to think that was a very small cadre of web trolls, because why does it matter that the main characters are all women? What matters more is that it’s funny. Unfortunately, the new Ghostbusters isn’t funny enough. This isn’t the fault of its stars, either. Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon have proven themselves to be very, very funny. The fault must be laid at the feet of our current studio structure, in which even comedies have to be big, eye-popping, exhausting entertainment machines. This system often squeezes the life out of viable projects.

The original Ghostbusters was actually a victim of this same kind of studio bloat: The problem has only gotten worse since 1984. (See Pauline Kael’s seminal essay “Why the Movies Are So Bad” in her book Taking It All In.) Even some of the most beloved movies of the 80s, including Ghostbusters `84, Batman `89, and the Indiana Jones trilogy, all acquire tunnel-vision in the last act, when they ratchet up the stakes the only way they know how: by going as big as possible. It’s the reason we feel a sense of closure when there’s an explosion in a movie. We’ve been trained well.

It’s depressing that a movie like Ghostbusters must adhere to such exhausting, banal conventions, but it’s the reality. And this reality becomes clear right at the beginning of Ghostbusters, when a glowy green ghost terrorizes a tour guide inside a haunted mansion. The terrified man tries to escape from the house, but winds up in the basement, where the floor begins to move as some kind of green oozy stuff bubbles up underneath it and threatens to engulf him. Soon, the powerful and apparently very pissed off ghost rushes through and then the scene ends.

This opening reveals a lot about the movie’s flaws. It’s not just the bigness of the production. The writers, Paul Feig and Katie Dippold, somehow forget that they’re making a comedy. They’re hyper-focused on the story, to the point that it often plays like a straight horror flick, or better yet, a straight Marvel Comics installment. Especially at the end, Ghostbusters looks no different from a superhero movie in which an all-powerful villain destroys New York City, smashing through whole buildings without actually harming any citizens. At times, there is nothing funny happening on screen, which is usually when the film employs the one-liners of Ghostbuster #4, Patty, played by Leslie Jones, who dishes out quips like she’s dealing cards at a casino.

The girls have their moments. I’m a devoted fan of Kristen Wiig, who can do comedy and drama with equal finesse, and who has a knack for whimsical flakiness, a quality — or perhaps an affectation — she exhibits in Bridesmaids when she’s in an uncomfortable or threatening situation or when she’s trying to be funny. But Wiig is basically the straight-man in this film, save a few moments where she dishes out a sliver of her brand of fizzy insanity. In one scene, Wiig bursts into a fancy restaurant where the Mayor of New York is having lunch, trying to warn him about an impending ectoplasmic apocalypse. The secret service agents attempt to eject her from the room as she grips the table, pulling it with her out the door. Wiig is game when it comes to these acts of silly, delightful humor, and I kept wanting more moments like that for her.

And then there’s Melissa McCarthy, so often miscast as the punching bag of any comedy, who sort of fades into the background in this movie. One of McCarthy’s least acknowledged talents is her painfully sharp delivery, which she employs here to some effect. And, just as in Spy, McCarthy is funnier here when she’s competent and in on the joke. But both Wiig and McCarthy are overshadowed by their co-stars, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, which isn’t always a good thing. I’ve relished McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton impersonations on Saturday Night Live, but she gives a surprisingly limited performance in Ghostbusters, ceaselessly mugging for the camera in every scene. McKinnon’s face is like a neon skyline: every attribute is screaming for your attention. The schtick is funny until it’s not, and until it feels like schtick and nothing more. McKinnon’s Jillian Holtzmann stands in for Egon, the nerdiest member of the original Ghostbusters, played by the late Harold Ramis. But Ramis had some genuinely human moments, like when he tells a woman, “I collect spores, molds, and fungus,” knowing she’ll be turned off by his hobby but nonetheless defiantly proud of his interests. Or later, when the ghostbusters are about to use their ghost-catching devices for the first time and realize they could be endangering their own lives, Egon says, “I feel personally responsible.” Beneath his nerdiness and his savant-like knowledge, there’s a beating heart. McKinnon’s character never grows beyond the conception of a one-note SNL sketch. Leslie Jones fares better, even though she’s ostensibly cast as the stereotypical sassy black character. She’s the most endearing one of the bunch, hired as the fourth Ghostbuster because she’s a New Yorker who knows the city inside out.

Fans of the original will enjoy the cameo appearances of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts (who’s so underrated), and Sigourney Weaver. But as much as I enjoyed seeing these wonderful performers make little appearances in the film, part of me longs for movies that aren’t so dependant on nostalgia. The new Ghostbusters tells its own story to be sure. It’s not a direct remake. But its existence is absolutely based on people’s nostalgia for the original, which may explain why so many fans were annoyed about Paul Feig’s casting choice. His casting is fine. The movie, though, needs work.

With Chris Hemsworth as Kevin, the Ghostbusters’ dumb-hot receptionist, Andy Garcia, Charles Dance, Michael Kenneth Williams, Matt Walsh, Ed Begley, Jr., Cecily Strong, and Michael McDonald.

Human Middle Finger Melissa McCarthy Cannot Save 'The Boss' From Itself

In The Boss, Melissa McCarthy is like a human-size middle finger capped with a sprig of too-perfectly coiffed red hair. She dominates every scene she’s in, but like the moronic Tammy, holding the beleaguered fast food restaurant employees hostage, she does so by force. You will laugh at me, McCarthy seems to be screaming. And many do, despite the fact that The Boss is an almost total embarrassment, save for a few well-constructed scenes. McCarthy plays Michelle Darnell, celebrity CEO. The first time we see Michelle, she’s headlining some swanky financial self-help conference, where she emerges onto a glittering stage like a rock star, accompanied by dancers and belting out some wretched hip hop song. The rapping is just about as painful as all those pratfalls McCarthy stages in her pandering attempt to make us love her comedy.

Michelle is someone who’s earned the freedom to be obnoxious thanks to her immense wealth. The movie opens with scenes of young Michelle being dropped off at the orphanage, repeatedly, by various families who, like the kidnappers in “The Ransom of Red Chief,” soon regret choosing that kid. She’s that kid alright. We get three of these scenes, but nothing about them changes except the song playing in the car as Michelle is dumped back on the steps of the orphanage, the final time waving her middle finger and shouting obscenities as the rejecting parents speed off. That’s Melissa McCarthy’s lot in life: She must always play the women nobody wants, then spend the rest of the movie convincing us that her ugliness and selfishness are attractive, appealing, charmingly offbeat.

But even though the movie wants to revel in Michelle’s character flaws--The Boss relies heavily upon the conflict created by a hostile word or deed--it also wants to reform them. We can count on two things in McCarthy’s worst movies: A) That she will be almost unbearably nasty and B) that she will have to change for the better by the end.

Why this Victorian need to reform Michelle? The set-up is so obvious that we know Michelle’s problem from the start: She cannot let herself get close to others because she’s been rejected so many times. Thus, when Michelle is busted for insider trading and completely ruined, she’s forced to live with her put-upon ex-assistant Claire (played by Kristen Bell), who has a daughter named Rachel. We know why all this is happening: So that Michelle can learn THE IMPORTANCE OF FAMILY. Yes, family is so beautiful, if only you can find the right family; and you shouldn’t let your horrible family poison your image of the ideal family, because, FAMILY!

For a movie this bawdy (full of raucous jeers and profane outbursts and cartoonish violence) to embrace such treacly sentiments feels like a cop-out. As a writer, McCarthy doesn't seem to understand her own merits. This is the second time McCarthy deserves the blame for coughing up a bad movie vehicle. The wretched Tammy provided us with the first inklings that McCathy works better with other people’s material. She and husband Ben Falcone worked out the script for both Tammy and The Boss, and Falcone directed them both. They start with the premise that McCarthy embodies a certain brand of offensive chaos and they run with it.

McCarthy is at her best under the direction of Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, Spy), who knows how to unleash her like a stick of dynamite with great comic effect. Even when they’re falling down or saying something outrageous, the characters McCarthy plays in Bridesmaids and Spy keep their dignity. They're capable women, and they aren't merely the butt of someone else's joke. And even though there's something effortlessly wicked and amusing about that look Melissa McCarthy gets on her face when she's whispering horrible threats while forcing a deadly smile, in The Boss she never overcomes the obnoxiousness of her character. 

The story of Michelle’s attempts to restore her financial greatness is promising, but it's executed poorly. Michelle creates a sort-of Girl Scouts for Profit, where the girls actually get to keep a percentage of the brownies they sell. But, when she gets too close to Claire (whose brownie recipe is responsible for the company’s success) and Rachel, Michelle sells the business to a rival CEO (and former lover) played by Peter Dinklage. She screws over her business partner all because of her pathological fear of connection and rejection. The act feels tired and meaningless, especially when we can already predict the outcome. 

The Boss fails because it doesn’t have the nerve to go all the way: It can be brassy and offensive up to a point, but only because it will self-correct in the end. The final 20 minutes, in which Michelle, Claire, and Claire’s banal love interest try to steal a contract to save their business, are a total misfire, riddled with missed opportunities and yawn-inducing clichés. It fails too because McCarthy and Falcone do not want to create a more complex character: Why can’t Michelle be both offensive and charming? Why do Michelle’s flaws have to be so easily diagnosed? When Barbara Stanwyck doesn’t reform in The Lady Eve, it’s because she’s exactly how she wants to be, and she’s managed to win her man to boot, without compromising her criminal values. The Boss demands so much from us: it shouldn’t demand that we swallow its Hallmark ending too.

With Annie Mumulo, Kristen Schaal, and Kathy Bates (who plays Michelle's mentor/sworn enemy, and adds some texture to her three minutes of screen time).

Spy

Four years ago, Melissa McCarthy hit the stratosphere playing the unexpectedly wise misfit Megan in Paul Feig’s Bridesmaids. But the resulting McCarthy vehicles have been largely disappointing until now. The Heat was funny, but totally misshapen, like putting the camera in front of a drunk person at a bar. Letting McCarthy lose it for ten minutes can indeed deliver laughs, but they’re cheap laughs that reduce her to a very limiting kind of crazy-lady “performance.” And the result of this direction has been pretty dismal. (See Identity Thief and Tammy.) Now Paul Feig has returned as director and given us Spy, which is structurally the strongest Melissa McCarthy vehicle thus far. Spy is clever and inventive in ways that her previous films were not, and, happily, this movie lets its star be competent and self-aware. It was so hard to give a damn about Tammy when she was such a heartless moron (quite a needless, even cruel combination for any character). It’s much easier and much more fun to rally for McCarthy’s character in Spy: Susan Cooper, the CIA desk jockey who secretly pines for a more exciting career.  

Cooper plays the virtual wingman to Jude Law’s character, an agent who gets to do all the fun stuff, like infiltrate nuclear arms transactions in Bulgaria. Jude Law feels like perfect casting here: he has a corrupted charmingness about him; you always expect him to be angling for himself even when he’s mostly a good guy. Even as she sits at a computer screen watching Jude Law’s back (“there’s a guy coming down the stairs; there’s three of them coming toward you down the hallway”), Susan Cooper is in command and good at what she does. In terms of characterization, this movie has done a complete 180, because now almost everyone but McCarthy is totally inept. The CIA office is infested with rats, and we keep seeing the little rodents scurrying around the cubicles and climbing up on employees’ shoulders. While Susan repeatedly saves her agent from actual gunshots and bomb explosions, her colleagues sare shooting the shit around the water cooler three feet away from her desk.

But let’s skip ahead, to where McCarthy is unexpectedly pulled into some exciting field work in Paris. She finally gets to be a legit spy, and that’s where the movie gets interesting. Feig’s script actually bothers to surprise us, which is itself a refreshing delight in a world where comedies are too content with mediocrity. Feig stops short of making this Naked Gun 44¼, but he clearly has an affection both for spy movies and spoofs of spy movies. (The opening titles could actually be mistaken for a Bond film; and Spy isn’t afraid to let someone fall flat on his ass for a joke.) I was also surprised by how many people actually get killed in Spy, which is something many comedies are afraid to do, instead taking the Looney Toons “extreme-violence-will-only-temporarily-hurt-you” tack most of the time. But the characters in Spy get beat up and bruised and make fools of themselves and occasionally die.

McCarthy, however, takes everything on her chin, and as her character gets deeper into the film’s loosey-goosey espionage plot, she gets tougher and more comically aggressive. Feig has finally mastered the balancing act of controlling McCarthy while allowing her to pop off just enough to leave us in fits of hysterics. And she’s surrounded by a wonderful ensemble cast, all of whom have been given full characters to play. Jason Statham is particularly appealing as the comically badass agent who’s not nearly as skilled as he thinks he is. Miranda Hart, who may be unfamiliar to American viewers but who has made a name for herself in British television, is a delight as Susan’s co-worker and best friend. When the movie slows and down gives us little bursts of conversation between these two performers, it feels like a gift. McCarthy finally has a full, rich (ish) character to play, and Hart and McCarthy bring out the best in each other. (I did wish that there could have been a little more shaping to their friendship; it doesn’t get quite as deep as it could. But it’s a start.)

And then there’s Rose Byrne. What can I say about Rose Byrne? I am so happy that she is making movies. Byrne is beautiful and glamorous and smart and funny, and it’s always a pleasure when Hollywood actresses get to be all of those things at once. Here she plays the villain, a spoiled, rich Bulgarian woman named Rayna Boyanov who alone knows the location of some nuclear weapon. (It’s the kind of unimportant spy-movie-nonsense that you have to have in these movies.) It’s not evident in the film’s theatrical trailer, but Byrne and McCarthy spend much of the film playing off each other, and their chemistry pops when McCarthy turns up the volume on her aggressiveness, matching Byrne's terrific mean-girl-with-nukes bitchiness.

The best thing about Spy is its shaping. Feig has written an actual story with actual jokes and characters that feel full of life. These qualities allow the humor to grow organically out of the story; it doesn’t feel like someone is just pointing the camera at insanity and hoping for the best. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m always grateful when filmmakers take the time to create funny situations and then let their actors breathe life into them. Spy has vitality and spark to it. You have fun with these people who seem like they’re having fun too.

With Allison Janney, Bobby Cannavale, Peter Serafinowicz, and 50 Cent.  

Tammy

Tammy represents quite a lot of missed opportunities. It's a meandering comedy about a woman who would generally be described as "white trash" embarking on a road trip with her alcoholic grandmother. (Using Grandma's car and money.) The film opens with its star, the amiably blunt, unfettered, unashamedly not-all-together Melissa McCarthy, driving her beat-up green sedan down a narrow country road. She reaches in the back for something and careens right into a deer. Tammy gets out and crouches down, lovingly talking to the deer, patting it (dangerously near its impressive antlers) and praying it will get up and scamper off unscathed. When it does, it startles Tammy (laughter from the audience) and she happily watches it indeed walk away, unharmed by the collision. This scene is telling, because McCarthy usually acts like a stick of dynamite, and whenever a comic scene turns chaotic, she explodes. But here, as Tammy, McCarthy uses a little more restraint. She's not quite as profane as she was in The Heat. And she's not as worldly-wise as she was in Bridesmaids. But seeing Melissa McCarthy play a ne'er-do-well is kind of depressing. Perhaps because she's a regular person, so not Hollywood, it's been enjoyably surprising to see her play people who are capable and funny. Here she's funny because she's a putz.

Sadly, Tammy isn't the smashing comedy it could have been. This is almost exclusively the project of Melissa McCarthy and her husband, actor/director Ben Falcone. McCarthy produced the film, and the two of them wrote the screenplay. (Falcone appears here as the manager of a hamburger joint.) But neither of them seems sure of who or what Tammy is supposed to be. Is she the obnoxious perpetual screw-up of the first half of the film? If so, the film seriously errs when suddenly Tammy turns nice and gets cleaned up (thanks to her cousin Lenore, a rich lesbian full of homespun wisdom played by Kathy Bates, whose partner is played by the lovely Sandra Oh). McCarthy has scored a lot of points for being a blowsy wreck with a foul mouth. But I think the reason people fell in love with her as a performer was because she was an endearing oddity in Bridesmaids. She was the only character in that film who was brutally honest. Yet behind her honesty was love, not spite. Tammy is so much a caricature that when we get to the sweet side of her, it feels utterly manufactured. This character is a circus act, a "greatest hits" compilation of McCarthy's somewhat limited--although admittedly very funny at times--schtick.

Perhaps I wouldn't be so irritated with this movie if it weren't for the sheer waste of it. This film has in its cast, among others, Susan Sarandon, Allison Janney, Toni Collette, and Gary Cole. Yet the characters seem poorly thought out, particularly in terms of age. They cast Saradon, who's 67, as Tammy's grandmother (McCarthy is 43), Allison Janney, who's 54, as her mom. That shoddy math bugged me throughout the film because a mother-daughter movie would have worked just as well. Sarandon is too fresh, too strong of an actress, to play the feeble but feisty grandma. It's as if they wanted to go for the short, prunish old grandmother (played by Estelle Getty) from The Golden Girls but cast Bea Arthur to play her instead. Sarandon really doesn't get to do that much of interest here anyway. And despite the fact that she does a lot of immature things (flashing her breasts at a lesbian party, shacking up with a stranger she meets in a bar), it's very difficult to see her as Tammy's mom. They just don't seem remotely related to each other. As for actresses Allison Janney and Toni Collette, I have no idea why they agreed to make this film when they had absolutely nothing funny or interesting to do (especially Collette, who barely speaks). Perhaps it was a favor? Certainly a misuse of their considerable talents.

There's also a tedious love interest, played by Mark Duplass, who's probably the most uninteresting romantic lead I've seen in a long time. The film seems ready and willing to give Tammy a redemptive streak, yet it's not bold enough to give her a hunky Channing Tatum-ish star (or someone with more personality) as a boyfriend. Perhaps they thought a bland character would balance Tammy like mayo on a chili pepper. (I'm not sure that's actually a thing...) Duplass is just too boring, too neutral, too unoffensive. He tells Tammy that he's attracted to her because his life is boring and she's very not boring, and Tammy rightly makes fun of his poor complimenting skills. Why did the filmmakers think this would be good comedy? It's makes for a lot of dreary scenes between them both. Why didn't they just find Tammy some hunky Tab Hunter-esque actor the way John Waters did for Divine in Polyester?

Kathy Bates was the most likable character in this movie, and even Sandra Oh came off well despite her limited screen time and dialogue. She has a lovely talent for facial expressions, and she acts circles around some of the more talkative characters. Dan Aykroyd shows up briefly as Tammy's father, but it's as if they just wanted to say, "hey, we've got Dan Aykroyd in this movie. You haven't seen him in a while! He's funny!" He does get one funny moment when he threatens to murder Tammy's cheating husband (played by Nat Faxon). Yes, Tammy is full of talented people assigned to undercooked roles, which may be the worst crime a comedy can commit.

There are amusing bits. Perhaps the funniest scene in the movie is the one you see in the trailer, when Tammy holds up a fast food restaurant with a greasy paper bag over her head and another one fastened over her hand so she can pretend she's holding a gun. When the film stops being a road trip movie--because Tammy and Grandma are visiting cousin Lenore at her beautiful country house in Kentucky--it feels like a relief from the banal chaos of their journey. But mostly Tammy is a messy movie about the gloriousness of being a mess. I could vouch for the second part if this movie were more put together. That's one mess that does need fixing.

The Heat

I can't say that I loved The Heat as much as I loved Bridesmaids (both of which were helmed by director Paul Feig), but I howled my way through it just the same. How can you not, especially when Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy have such a wonderful onscreen chemistry? The Heat is nothing new, really: the old unlikely buddies plot with the one novelty being the gender of the buddies. As the by-the-book, cocky FBI agent, Bullock is despised by everyone in her department, but considers herself a success because she does her job better than anyone she knows. It's that old career-woman-with-a-chip-on-her-shoulder facade, one which Melissa McCarthy, as the brash, pushy, get-in-your-face-and-cuss-you-out Boston undercover cop, seeks to tear down with a wrecking ball.

The story involves a Boston drug dealer and hits close to home for McCarthy's character: her brother was working for this enigmatic dealer, and has just been released from prison. (She had him arrested herself, a point of betrayal in the eyes of her obnoxious, stereotypical Boston family, headed by SNL alum Jane Curtin, who's sadly given nothing memorable to do.) 

I don't suppose we go to comedies for novelty anymore. And if we do, we probably go to independent films like The Kings of Summer or something by Wes Anderson. Comedies became sitcom-level affairs probably in the 1960s, and with few exceptions, very little has changed about them. The old formulas continue to make money as long as the right faces are acting them out. As tried-and-true farces continue to be greenlit by the big studios, the only compensation for weary audience members is the acting. And we're lucky to live in a world, so green and young and still blinking with weariness under the new light of the morning sun, in which Melissa McCarthy is as celebrated as she is.

McCarthy's performances made Bridesmaids, a superior formula comedy, and Identity Thief, an inferior one, not just watchable but lovable, at least partly. And she offers the same saving grace to The Heat, but she's matched by Sandra Bullock, who's at her best when she's being a clown. (Who remembers that she was in a drama like Crash, or the ridiculous thriller The Net, when she's given us much better times in movies like The Proposal, not a great movie, and now The Heat, a pretty good movie?)

A caveat on excessive profanity: As a teenager, I developed a fondness for bad language, perhaps because it was verboten. Somehow, a four-letter word can magnify the comic force of a line exponentially, if done right. But, it needs to be done with creativity and enough actual ideas to justify itself. Melissa McCarthy peppers her dialogue with F words, and while some of them work, the total effect is a kind of numbing of the senses. You get the idea that she thinks this is the only way to be funny. (And yet, she managed a very funny character in Bridesmaids without using the F word every three seconds.) Meanwhile, it was delightfully amusing that Bullock's character refused to cuss, and when she finally did (during her predictable change-of-heart, in which she realizes how stuffy she is and how "good" her partner is at her job), it was quite amusing. (And I thought back to The King's Speech, when Colin Firth erupts into a torrent of profanity during a particularly frustrating session with his speech therapist.)

The Heat will probably catch some flack with critics because it is absolutely unbelievable. These ladies would never get as far as they do in reality, without either getting themselves killed or dismissed from duty. But, who goes to these kinds of movies for realism anyway? It is an uproarious if imperfect diversion. Written by Katie Dippold. With Demian Bichir, Marlon Wayans, Michael Rapaport, Spoken Reasons, Dan Bakkedahl, and Taran Killam. ★★★

Identity Thief

There's nothing particularly original about Identity Thief, and the credibility of the plot--not to mention much of the action--is slim at best, but it's fun watching Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy in a road trip-buddy movie in which she plays a white-trash ne'er-do-well who's been racking up thousands of dollars in debt with fake credit cards using his gender-neutral name (Sandy Patterson). McCarthy's performance is funny, flamboyant, lovable, even touching at times, and Bateman is his usual annoyed but likable self. (He seems to always be playing Michael Bluth from Arrested Development). 

There's a sort of side-plot about McCarthy's character being pursued by angry fellow criminals and a bounty hunter, which spurs some of the story's action but never quite gels as solid comedy writing. Still, the jokes, even when they don't work, are in ready supply, and the movie makes a few surprise turns that keep it from being totally predictable. (I suppose it's probably fairly obvious that squeaky clean numbers-cruncher Bateman will be negatively influenced by his duplicitous counterpart.)

With Jon Favreau, Amanda Peet, T.I., Genesis Rodriguez, Morris Chestnut, John Cho, Robert Patrick, and Eric Stonestreet. Written by Craig Mazin. Directed by Seth Gordon. 111 min. ★★½

Bridesmaids

As I was sitting in the theater howling at the insanely funny Kristen Wiig in the new comic tour de force Bridesmaids, I started thinking about movies where the main character is an underdog who can do no right, and how movies with such characters tend to milk our sympathy--even subconsciously invoking our self-pity as though pulling the strings of our emotions without our consent. I thought of that poor schmuck in Meet the Parents, and how, by the end of the movie, I wanted him to leave those people behind and never speak to them again. I felt the same way for Kristen Wiig's character, for a while, but the beauty of Bridesmaids is that it doesn't let you completely lapse into a pity party for her character. It's not like the horrendously unfunny You Again, which was pure lazy indulgence. In Bridesmaids we are not just feeling the gut punches to Wiig's character, we're also receiving the pride-diminishing life lesson that, eventually, you have to stop playing the victim and take control of your own life.

Bridesmaids' plot operates in a mostly standard fashion: chronic failure Annie (Wiig) must compete with elegant, snotty, rich Helen (Rose Byrne) as she takes on the duty of being the maid of honor for her best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph). We identify with Annie right away, even though Helen isn't a complete bitch. She's close, but the movie isn't going to let us hate her with impunity.

In fact, the complexity of these women and their relationships is what gives Bridesmaids such personality. Besides that, director Paul Feig doesn't rush the humor. He knows how talented the cast is, and he lets them take time building the jokes to a crescendo. You laugh so much you'll miss half the gags, but what's going on visually is just as funny as what's being said, so you eventually become exhausted because you're laughing so much of the time. Bridesmaids is like a really good mixed drink and a really crude joke combined. The crudeness goes down easier because of the buzz you're feeling--as well as the sweetness, which isn't saccharine but genuine sugar.

I enjoyed the predictable relationship developing between Annie and a likable Irish cop, played by Chris O'Dowd. And Melissa McCarthy stole every scene she was in as the bride's sister-in-law to-be, a plump, plucky, and socially awkward self-made woman whose eccentric personality seems to render her oblivious to the drama that's unfolding between the other women. Wendi McLendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper round out the group of bridesmiads (the first one is a discontented housewife and mother of three, and the second a dreamy-eyed newlywed who's obsessed with Disney World and domestic life).

Wiig's comic timing is impeccable. She reminds me of Tina Fey, but with a dose of Goldie Hawn. She's utterly likable even when she's being stubborn, and her humor is genuine. There's something so natural and unforced about her performance. She seems to be having a wonderful time with Rudolph, who projects her own comic radiance while playing the straight gal. Byrne is wonderful too as the spoiled rich thing with a heart of platinum. With Jon Hamm as Annie's insignificant other and the late Jill Clayburgh as her mom. Written by Annie Mumolo and Kristin Wiig.