Is Bridesmaids a turning point for funny women?

Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig — (Image credit: Suzanne Hanover/Universal)

The big day is here! Bridesmaids, the highly anticipated comedy starring and co-written by Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig, has finally hit multiplexes. Some are heralding the female-centric comedy, which was produced by dude-comedy kingpin Judd Apatow, as a turning point for funny women in Hollywood — a Hangover-like lark that could appeal to both sexes and make a lot of money. Is it really a revolutionary film, or just another wedding-themed chick-flick? (Watch the trailer for Bridesmaids.)

It is pretty groundbreaking: "This might be a turning point in feminism and comedy," says Mary Pols at TIME. Bridesmaids mixes over-the-top moments worthy of Hangover — notably a sequence where the women defecate and discuss it after an unseemly bout of food poisoning hits during a visit to a fancy dress shop — with "a shrewd examination of female insecurity." I hope men will give it a chance, too. The film "might be all about women, but the laughs are universal."

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This is no revolution... but it is funny: Bridesmaids isn't really a "radical movie," says Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. It is "unexpectedly funny," and far smarter than your typical wedding flick. "Too many studio bosses seem to think that a woman's place is in a Vera Wang," but here, the women are hilarious and disgusting, subverting typical cliches about the sexes. But Wiig and co-writer Annie Mumolo appear more concerned with getting big laughs than offering a lengthy critique on the bridal-industrial complex, or the place of women in Hollywood.

Eh, it's not even that funny: Bridemaids is "stitched together crudely, and only semi-successfully, from random chick flick and bromance parts," says Stephanie Zacharek at Movieline. Much of the too-long film is unsettling "wallflower self-pity" masquerading "as 'We can be as gross as the guys are!' empowerment." Sure, the film puts the "enormously gifted" Wiig and Maya Rudolph front and center (no small feat given the lack of starring roles for funny women), but it's too flabby, and the characters too unsympathetic, to make proper use of their great talents.