‘They let me admit my passion’: why Bridesmaids is my favorite film | Brides

At this year’s Oscars ceremony, Kristen WiigMaya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne and Ellie Kemper took the stage to celebrate 15 years of Brides. To be honest, as awards go it was hard to watch, and the series was missing Wendi McLendon-Covey (recovering from a neck lift, naturally), but I was a little happy to see them together anyway: Couples has been my comfort film for almost half of my life.

Bridesmaids, written by Wiig and Annie Mumolo and directed by Paul Feig, arrived in a bowl of confetti in 2011. It follows Annie (Wiig) – already in a fragile place after the collapse of her bread, her relationship and her life – as she moves to become the maid of honor for her best friend Lillian (Rudolph). We don’t see much of Dougie, Lillian’s boyfriend: it’s Annie and Lillian’s relationship that really matters here. They have the kind of friendship that seems unbreakable, built on years of love, shared interests and endless inside jokes – that is, until wedding planning begins, and Annie finds herself ill-equipped to lead the motley crew of couples Lillian has assembled to prepare for the wedding. No one is more likely to destroy the friendship or Annie’s head than Helen (Byrne), the scheming wife of Dougie’s boss. Helen is everything that Annie isn’t: poised, well-connected and very good at planning bachelorette parties. They argue all the time, and the results are very difficult.

In 2011, mainstream movies were bro-y movies in which women didn’t appear, and I remember a lot of skepticism among the media and my younger friends about Girls’ Generation. A movie written by women, about women? Would it be funny? According to that era, if you’re going to enjoy a comedy made by women at all, it should come with guilt. For my part, I met Bridesmaids on “Sylvia Plath“During my life, I believe, like many 16-year-olds on Tumblr, that if I want to be a writer, I have to be very difficult. I should be tortured a little bit, but if I could not endure it, then I have to gradually give up the light heart.

Of course, Bridesmaids proved his naysayers very wrong, very quickly. It grossed $306.5m at the box office and won a few Oscars along the way, but for me, it blew a small window – one I didn’t know I wanted open – off its hinges. Here was a film with killer dialogue, wall-to-wall jokes, and an all-female cast, … universally acclaimed? Suddenly, it’s both the light and taken seriously It didn’t seem like a contradiction, nor did my love for the likes of Nora Ephron and Louise Rennison did not feel guilty. It allowed me to accept my own preferences, and I watched the movie over and over again, delighted to see women on TV laughing as freely as I knew in real life.

Then, at the age of 22, recovering from a very difficult relationship – one that messed with my mind – my best friend wore Girls, sometimes night after night, to help me through the breakup. Studying for the final exam, unsure of what to do and freeing myself from the person who treated me so badly, my friend and I always loved each other when Annie’s mother said to her from the bottom of her heart, “This is your floor!” Maybe there was an element of schadenfreude in seeing someone else’s life take a hit, but if I’m honest, it was really nice to know that I had my sense of humor even when my soul was hurt. From then on, we watched Bridesmaids once a year until we could do everything without the book. It has become the cornerstone of our relationship with our shared language: each time it is repeated, a different line enters our everyday lexicon.

Now that I’m in my 30s, going to my friends’ weddings and planning my own, it’s starting to change again. It’s a cautionary tale about how not to approach my own wedding, to begin with – although I’d say it was when I planned the hen party that I discovered the multi-faceted beauty of Annie’s bridal shower. The line “Did you think this women’s group would end?” that cookie?” puzzled us as we tried to figure out how much cake for 22 of the bride’s friends and family members.

Beyond that, Brides have some painful truths about this part of life. At its heart, it’s about the fear of your friends moving forward. It’s hard not to feel the pain when your friends form new, deeper relationships, but I was comforted by the end of the film: Annie and Lillian are dancing and singing to Wilson Phillips together, despite the whole drama. It reminds me that if I feel that creeping fear, I always text my best friend and currently loved the word Bridesmaids and know he will respond with the following line and the date of our next rewatch.

It reminds me that Annie is right when she tells her nemesis Helen that “we stay who we are” no matter how old we get. Best friends, like Groomsmen, will still be there.