Video review: "Bridesmaids"

Yeah, "Bridesmaids" was pretty much an intentional rip-off of "The Hangover." And no, it was not quite as funny as "The Hangover."

But the movie -- starring Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper and Melissa McCarthy -- proved that women could do raunchy humor with as much panache and gusto as the guys. This movie has a few more tender moments and more heart, but mostly it's a non-stop parade of crude jokes, f-bombs and conspicuous debauchery.

Wiig plays Annie, a sad-sack loser whose life is headed totally in the wrong direction. Her bakery shop closed down due to the recession, she's barely employed in a dead-end job, and her roommates consist of a really weird English chick and her even weirder brother.

When her best friend Lillian (Rudolph) announces her wedding, Annie gets pumped about being the maid of honor. But it turns out Lillian has another friend, Helen (Rose Byrne), who's rich and charming, and would just love to elbow Annie out of the limelight.

A few set-ups became instant comedy classics: Dueling toasts at the announcement party, and a major gastrointestinal eruption during the dress fittings.
And Melissa McCarthy steals the show as the bride's socially inept sister, whose suggestions for livening up the part include having a "female 'Fight Club'."
For a copycat, "Bridesmaids" delivers the goods.

Video goodies are quite good in the DVD version, and become downright terrific for Blu-ray.

The DVD includes a feature-length commentary track, and for once they did it right: Director Paul Feig, co-screenwriter (along with Wiig) Annie Mumolo and all five of the "bridepack" team up to dish and tell in-jokes. It also includes an "unrated" version of the film with a few more bits of filthy humor.

There's also a gag reel, deleted/extended scenes and a fake commercial for Annie's jeweler employer.

Upgrade to Blu-ray, and there's tons more stuff. There's a making-of documentary, a full music video of "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips, more deleted/extended scenes, another fake commercial and several other featurettes and goodies.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Bridesmaids"

Yes, "Bridesmaids" is pretty much a rip-off of "The Hangover" with a genitals swap-out.

The novelty that it's gals wading into a pool of raunchy humor with glee is still enough to carry it over the top, along with a winning performance by Kristen Wiig as a loser who keeps getting her faced rubbed in her own misery, and still comes out smiling.

The comedy is broad and predictable enough that I pretty much always saw it coming -- and yet I still found myself laughing when the jokes arrived right on target.

Wiig plays Annie, the former owner of a failed Milwaukee cupcake shop, whose life is going nowhere fast. Heck, she's not even stuck in neutral, she's slowly rolling backwards.

She's got a dead-end job in a jewelry store she hates, lives with a pair of weirdo British siblings, and the closest thing she has to a relationship is being used for sex by a gorgeous but vapid playboy (an uncredited Jon Hamm).

Then her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) suddenly announces her engagement, and we're off to the races of debauchery and gross-out humor.

Tagged as the maid of honor, it's up to Annie to plan the shower, bachelorette party and everything else. But she keeps getting elbowed aside by Helen (Rose Byrne), Lillian's newfound friend in Chicago. Helen is beautiful, rich and outwardly charming, but clearly wants the spotlight as top wing-woman.

At the engagement party, Helen and Annie turn well-wishes to the bride and groom into a spiraling case of one-upswomanship, and it's a matter of time before the conflict blows up.

Two other gals round out the crew. Wendi McLendon-Covey plays Rita, a married friend who provides a glimpse of wedlock past its prime. Rita has three teenage boys, and describes the activities and hygiene of this sub-species of humanity in ways that are detailed, revolting and, alas, completely accurate.

Then there's the Zach Galifianakis role of the groom's sister invited along out of a dutiful sense of compulsion. Like Alan from "The Hangover," Megan is vertically challenged and horizontally blessed, with social skills not so much stunted as still in latency.

Megan pretty much epitomizes the entire movie. Even though the character is familiar (the kind term) and obvious, I couldn't get enough of her. Melissa McCarthy attacks the role with brio, and gives Megan a sort of unassailable confidence that's somehow reassuring -- even when she does things like propose a "female Fight Club" in which they beat each other senseless.

Wiig, who co-wrote the screenplay with  Annie Mumolo, holds it all together. Her Annie is a sweet girl with a bit of a mean streak, who's been hammered so much by life that we enjoy watching her fight back. Even a scene where she makes a colossal drunken spectacle of herself on a plane flight only makes us want to hug her, and wait for the next laugh.

Things get interesting with the arrival of Rhodes (Chris O'Dowd), a Wisconsin state trooper who keeps pulling Annie over in her deathtrap of a jalopy and begins a flirtatious back-and-forth. Like Annie's roommates, he's English, giving the movie an explicably British tang.

The crudity of some of the humor isn't quite up to "Hangover" standards, but it approaches. There's nothing like a bunch of women in frilly wedding dresses getting a bad case of food poisoning to prove that gals can do revolting physical comedy as well as the boys.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Love and Other Drugs"

Here's a fairly conventional romantic drama that does a fantastic job of showing off the charms of two very attractive performers, Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal. It's almost a throwback to an old-fashioned type of movie-making in which stars were stars, and it was the job of the director, screenwriter and crew to make them look as good as possible.

"Love and Other Drugs" is set in the late 1990s when Viagra first hit the market, and Gyllenhaal plays Jamie Randall, the salesman who was born to hock it. Good-looking and with a rogue-ish charm that he uses to great effect, Jamie has a twinkly smile that melts the heart of the orneriest receptionist guarding access to the doctors he needs to pitch.

Jamie comes from a family of physicians (George Segal and the late Jill Clayburgh play the parents) but was a med school washout. Even his slovenly younger brother Josh (Josh Gad) is a dot-com millionaire.

He's eager to please -- "I'm very trainable" is his pet phrase -- and hides his self-loathing behind a charismatic veneer built on can-do ambition.

Jamie's not above playing dirty. A Pfizer man, he dumps the drug samples from his chief competitor from Lily (Gabriel Macht) into the dumpster, and bribes an influential doc (Hank Azaria) to let him tag along on patient rounds, posing as an intern.

There he meets Maggie Murdock (Hathaway), a waitress with Parkinson's and an attitude. After baring her breast during the exam, she clocks Jamie in the head upon learning he's a pharmaceutical rep.

In classic meet-cute form, in moments he transforms her anger into admiration for his magnetism. Soon they're in bed, but Maggie lays out the rules: Just empty sex, no relationship. I don't think I have to tell you this rule gets shattered.

Director Edward Zwick, who co-wrote the script with Charles Randolph and Marshall Herskovitz, is better known for testosterone-laden flicks with a martial bent ("Courage Under Fire," "Glory"). His touch is light and sure, and he knows how to give Hathaway and Gyllenhaal that extra bit of star sparkle.

Maggie's disease, which is merely a reason for them to meet initially, takes on more weight as the narrative adopts an increasingly somber tone. The similarity to "Love Story" -- about a young cad who grows up when his lady has a life-changing illness -- is more than passing.

They're a solid pair of performances, as the actors show us layers to their characters we might not have initially guessed at.

They're also revealing in another way -- as in both actors show off an astonishing amount of skin. I can't remember the last time I saw two mainstream stars partaking in this much nudity.

The supporting performances are tidy and worthwhile. Oliver Platt plays Jamie's senior partner, who's hoping to ride his coattails to a spot in the Chicago office. Judy Greer is a slightly awkward receptionist who falls prey to Jamie's charms.

Azaria gets one nice scene where the doctor laments dealing with HMOs, drug companies and litigious lawyers instead of just making people's lives a little better.

Gad is the go-to man for comic relief, moving in with Jamie after his own marriage fails. Although, as Jamie himself finally thinks to ask, why does a multi-millionaire need to shack up with his brother?

"Love and Other Drugs" is sweet, funny, sad and occasionally even moves us a little. Despite the title, it doesn't really have anything insightful to say about drug companies making a profit by having doctors pump us full of medicine that may not even help us very much.

Call this movie a pleasant little placebo -- it may not make the world a better place, but it tastes good going down.

3 stars out of four