Reviews
The Spectator
Toby Young
"Apatow’s easygoing naturalism, as well as his skill at creating characters, makes his protagonists unusually plausible. They’re not just wind-up toys let loose in a comic mousetrap; they’re flesh and blood. We feel their pain and we want them to be happy. Bridesmaids is the first time Apatow has applied this formula to a chick flick and the result is an unqualified success."
25/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Daily Telegraph
Sukhdev Sandhu
"Sharply written and winningly performed, [Bridesmaids] delivers more laughs than any movie released this year, but also, the longer it goes on, develops into a surprisingly poignant evocation of self-scuppering loneliness … Though I’ve seen Bridesmaids three times, I can’t wait to see it again."
23/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Daily Telegraph
Bryony Gordon
"I had to be dragged along to a screening. But reader, I left the cinema realising that you should not judge a book by its cover, or a film by its title or poster. Because Bridesmaids may be wrapped up in ironically comic packaging, but it is a thing of absolute beauty."
17/06/2011
Read Full Review
Time Magazine
Mary Pols
"This might be a turning point in feminism and comedy, provided that both sexes can embrace it … "It's so nice to see average people in a movie," noted my companion as we exited the theater. I asked if her husband, who will almost certainly see The Hangover Part II, would pay a ticket for Bridesmaids. "Eh," she said. "I don't know." He should go: Bridesmaids might be all about women, but the laughs are universal."
11/05/2011
Read Full Review
The Los Angeles Times
Betsy Sharkey
"From the first overheated moments of "Bridesmaids," with its Kama Sutra-plus-six-positions sex — so satisfying for him, so exhausting for her — it's clear we're in for that rarest of treats: an R-rated romantic comedy from the Venus point of view … real people in real relationships, real raunchy, real funny. "
13/05/2011
Read Full Review
Total Film
Neil Smith
"It’s uneven, unwieldy and overlong, but if it’s yucks you’re after you’ll find them in abundance in a side-splitting comedy that lifts the veil on every wedding’s unsung heroines."
08/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Daily Mail
Jan Moir
"…overall, Bridesmaids has a spirit and warmth that is far too often missing from far too many commercial chick flicks … Bridesmaids might have a gauzy veil of vulgarity — but you will still be rolling in the aisle."
24/06/2011
Read Full Review
Time Out
Tom Huddleston
"Get a script stuffed with crackling one-liners, a talented and hugely likeable cast and the creative team responsible for the likes of ‘Freaks and Geeks’ (director Paul Feig) and ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ (producer Judd Apatow), and the result can be every bit as disgracefully enjoyable as its finest phallocentric equivalent … mostly ‘Bridesmaids’ is a triumph, an effortless blend of bad taste and good humour with a wholly believable, often very touching emotional core, all centred around one of the finest star-making comic performances in recent memory."
22/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Times
Kate Muir
"Bridesmaids is not perfect, but it is one of the best of the summer popcorn movies. You leave exhausted by giggling, which is sometimes precisely what a film should do."
24/06/2011
Read Full Review
Empire Magazine
Anna Smith
"At its best, Bridesmaids is proper, laugh-out-loud, sides-clutching, grin-at- your-mates funny … a female ensemble comedy that balances realistic characters with smart laughs and side-splitting farce. Not everything works, but there’s more than enough here to keep you chuckling…"
01/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Evening Standard
David Sexton
"Bridesmaids has an easy, lolloping pace and gives itself the time to push its scenarios to the limit … There's an improv element that really opens scenes out … [Moreover Bridesmaids] is shot with remarkably dogged camera-over-the-shoulder shots, cutting back and forth with the dialogue, keeping the viewer tightly involved … pretty much a rom-com in the end - but hugely enjoyable, fresh and rude, both touching and funny, all the way."
24/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Financial Times
Antonia Quirke
"At its best, Bridesmaids does that wonderful thing: tell the truth, indelicately. My guess is that most people will love it…"
23/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
"It's not exactly groundbreaking, but what's striking is how fresh and unusual the comedy looks … some obvious wordplay suggests itself on the subject of how [Wiig] has always been the supporting player but never the lead. Well, this movie has made her a star. It is her special day."
23/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Independent
Anthony Quinn
"How funny can the spectacle of fulminant diarrhoea on a shop floor be? Answer: really, excruciatingly funny … Through a combination of smart performances and scurrilous gags Bridesmaids yanks the buddy comedy from the hands of its traditional owners."
24/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Independent on Sunday
Jonathan Romney
"For all the fluffy trimmings, this is hardly a romcom, despite Annie's comic romance with an affable cop – a gruff, teddy-bearish Chris O'Dowd. Nor is it strictly a wedding comedy – that peculiar sub-genre that revived with the boisterous Muriel's Wedding before spawning countless insipid variants. Bridemaids cheerfully skewers such films, and in particular targets the retrograde cult of cuteness, the notion that pastel pinks and sugared almonds are – even in a, you know, ironic way – what every woman wants. For a contemporary Hollywood comedy, Bridesmaids is exceptionally classy, and very confidently paced. "
26/06/2011
Read Full Review
The New Statesman
Ryan Gilbey
"It's a long picture with a roomy structure typical of its producer, Judd Apatow, who specialises in comedies (Knocked Up, Funny People) with plenty of give. More characteristic of Wiig are those tightly wound episodes of pure mania in which gag is piled on top of delirious gag in the manner of vintage Steve Martin, until you feel, or fear, that it will never cease."
23/06/2011
Read Full Review
The New Yorker
David Denby
"The movie is uneven and lurching, but it provides many laughs."
01/06/2011
Read Full Review
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
"It isn’t a radical movie; it’s formally unadventurous; and there isn’t much to look at beyond all these female faces. Yet these are great faces, and the movie is smart about a lot of things … [proof that] women can go aggressive laugh to aggressive-and-absurd laugh with men. All they need, beyond talent and timing, a decent director and better lines, is a chance. "
12/05/2011
Read Full Review
The Observer
Jason Solomons
"There's an easy honesty in Bridesmaids that comes from a post-Sex and the City kind of feminism, one which allows Annie to be achingly self-aware ... The warnings are there, in her permanently broken car tail lights and in her mother (Jill Clayburgh) watching Tom Hanks in Castaway, suggesting the emotional shipwreck Annie has become. These subtle indicators lend pathos to the moments between the laughs. This is all too rare – not something with which sketch-based comedies such as Zoolander or Anchorman, for example, were overly concerned – and it makes this film not just the funniest of the many Judd Apatow productions, but by far the most charming."
26/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
"…a film that puts women front and centre without turning them into shrill stereotypes, idealised archetypes or worse, female facsimiles of overgrown boys … the gags are funny and consistent enough, and Wiig and co are so appealing, that any flaws are easily forgiven."
25/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Sunday Times
Cosmo Landesman
"Bridesmaids is like a comedy sketch show with a series of hits and misses. The comedy is often constructed so that, instead of the quick punch line, you get a series of small comic jabs that build and build — as when Annie and Helen compete at the engagement party to give the most gushing tribute to the bride-to-be — but it’s a laborious way to get a modest laugh ... What makes the film so enjoyable, however, is Wiig’s performance. She is one of those rare comedy actors who can act."
26/06/2011
Read Full Review
The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
"I found it tasteless and infinitely depressing, both in itself and for what it says about how women are being portrayed in modern films … If I had a daughter, I would try to steer her well away from this kind of crude, degrading Hollywood sexism."
24/06/2011
Read Full Review