Screenplay: Bridesmaids

I'll be honest.  I didn't love Bridesmaids when I saw it and I only read the script because it was the shortest comedy I had on hand.  However, the script is both funny and readable and I do not take either of those things for granted when reading a script.

The reason I didn't love Bridesmaids has to do with Annie.  Her dissatisfaction with life hit a little too close to home for me.  I could have gotten over it, because I really wanted Annie to succeed, but Annie throws a hissy fit, ruining her best friend's bridal shower.  I realize Annie had got to her breaking point, but her actions in this scene were selfish, childish, and felt uncalled for.  She deserved to get kicked out of Lillian's wedding.

And then... after her heart to heart with Megan, Annie isn't crazy anymore.  She went from trainwreck to grown up in one scene, but never actually took any action to make things better in her life (except make her love-interest a cake).  At the end of the movie, she still doesn't have a job or a place to live, but she has a boyfriend.  The movie got a lot of press for being made for women, but the message isn't women-friendly.  The lesson seems to be that the most important thing a woman can do is have a boyfriend.

To be fair, he is pretty cute.

Besides my dissatisfaction with Annie's behavior and change over the course of the movie, there was one thing that really struck me while reading the script: It didn't explicitly say everything.  There is a scene where the bridal party is trying on dresses and everyone gets food poisoning.  Lillian, in couture wedding dress, runs outside to try to make it to 7-eleven's bathroom, but ends up shitting in the street.  The scene is full of gross humor and I have been curious since seeing the movie about how that was written in the script.  And for the most part, it wasn't.  Very simple actions combined with more explicit dialog make what is happening very clear.  In dialog, the humor is funny in a way that would be uncomfortable if it were explicitly written in the action.

However, there were a number of times in the script where character traits were not mentioned until late in the script and there they were mentioned only in dialog.  For example, Officer Rhodes has a foreign accent.  This is very obvious if you watch the movie, but when you're reading the script, you don't realize he has an accent until Annie asks how he can be a cop if he's not American.  There were a number of times this happened, which made me wonder if some of these jokes were written in after casting was complete.  Had I not already seen the movie, I would have been very confused.

Next week I am reading a friend's script, so I will not be publicly blogging about my week's script reading.  However, I'll probably post another episode review of Downton Abbey.  I hope you are as excited as I am.