Bridesmaids: Funny but incomplete

Bridesmaids is a funny movie, but one that could have been much better.  In a role that she wrote for herself, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life.  Instead, she wreaks havoc on her best friend’s wedding planning and is about to sabotage a sweet romance with Chris O’Dowd.  So far, so good.

Producer Judd Apatow salted Wiig’s screenplay with some low brow stuff.  Now, I like to see gals at an upscale wedding boutique puking on each other and shitting themselves as much as the next guy (and it was the guys in the audience that were laughing the most at that scene).  But the Apatow additions didn’t quite mesh with the central story.

Still, we can conclude that Kristen Wiig has what it takes to carry a movie by herself.  Hopefully, next time she’ll get her script greenlighted as is.

Movies to See Right Now

Incendies

The searing drama Incendies is the year’s best film so far.  Upon their mother’s death, a young man and woman learn for the first time of their father and their brother and journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets.  As they bumble around Lebanon, we see the mother’s experience in flashbacks.  We learn before they do that their lives were created – literally – by the violence of the Lebanese civil war.

Don’t miss Cave of Forgotten Dreams while it can be seen in 3D;  Werner Herzog explores the amazing 30,000 year old Chauvet cave paintings.  In the fine French drama Queen to Play, a working class woman discovers a passion for chess  in midlife; she and her family, must adjust, along with a French-speaking Kevin Kline.

In Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life; it’s funny, but not one of the year’s best. Meek’s Cutoff is a disappointing misfire.

Source Code is a gripping scifi thriller with intelligence and heart, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Vera Farmiga and Michelle Monaghan. Hanna is a rip roaring girl-power thriller starring Saiorse Ronan as a 16-year-old raised in the Arctic Circle to be a master assassin by her rogue secret agent father, and then released upon the CIA.

For trailers and other choices,see Movies to See Right Now.

You can see trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick is Diabolique.

Movies on TV this week include the underrated Sam Peckinpah classic Junior Bonner and the campy Giant Mutant Bunny horror film Night of the Lepus on TCM.