Bridesmaids

Kristin Wiig is brilliant. This remains true despite a concerted effort on SNL‘s part to make me hate her—a campaign that Lorne Michaels ran consistently since the ’90s against some of their funniest women. If you’re a female and you join the cast of SNL, watch out—SNL thinks that funny female equals over-the-top annoying. Molly Shannon, Cheri Oteri, Anna Geysteyer, Ratchel Dratch, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poehler have all suffered from this phenomenon which may or may not have started with Victoria Jackson. In fact, the only SNL lady who seemed completely immune to this was Tina Fey and, oh look—she was the head writer.

Unlike The Hangover, which was basically a long comedy sketch, Bridesmaids is actually a movie. This is always the big question when it comes to comedies. Should you aspire to make a full cinematic experience and risk coming up short (Wedding Crashers) or do you simply shoot for non-stop emotionless laughs and achieve wild success at a less transcendent achievement (Anchorman). The high-water mark for thoroughly hilarious, complete-narrative cinema is currently Superbad (despite the unoriginality of its premise). And Bridesmaids guns to outdo Superbad on an emotional level (which isn’t too hard to do—as successful as Superbad was, its cathartic risks never shot from outside the paint).

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