The breakout star of Bridesmaids is the hilarious Melissa McCarthy, whose blunt, raunchy, corpulent character, Megan, exhibits the kind of antics we predominately associate with male comedians. McCarthy is familiar to fans of Gilmore Girls, a TV show she appeared on from 2000 to 2007, but it’s unlikely she ever had the opportunity on TV to exhibit the range of humor she displayed in Bridesmaids. She’s at the center of the most memorable scenes from the film, which is saying something because she’s probably got fifth billing behind Kristen Wigg and Maya Rudolph (of Saturday Night Live fame), Rose Byrne (of drop-dead gorgeous fame) and the band Wilson Phillips.
Actually, Wilson Phillips plays a really small role. And that’s good. Otherwise a story that is, at base, about a bunch of women planning and pulling off a wedding could have been a painfully unfunny chick flick. But Bridesmaids is going for much more, and to do that it’s willing to push the usual boundaries for female comedians.
Sure, we get the usual frank talk about sex and menstrual cramps, but those topics are safe in comparison with some of the other images and issues we encounter, including the bridesmaids adjourning to the bathroom after they’ve all been food poisoned and McCarthy hopping up and defecating into the sink with exploding diarrhea; or McCarthy sitting on a plane next to someone she suspects is an airline marshal and asking him if he’s secreted his gun up the crack of his butt, before going on to explain how that’s a practical place to keep a weapon; or McCarthy lying with her lover in bed as he eats a sumptuous roast beef sandwich and her making the comparison to … well, you get the picture.
She regales us with the kind of explicit gross-out humor we commonly associate with male comedians. If that’s not your cup of tea, then so be it. But I found it refreshing and hilarious for a female comedian to take the kind of chances we typically associate with male comedians. If any of her attempts were swing-and-misses, I don’t remember them.
