Bridesmaids has enjoyed colossal box office success and will almost certainly spawn a sequel some time soon, “The God Mother” perhaps?

Best described as a female “The Hangover”, the film attempts to marry, in every sense of the word, comedy, gross out sequences and high drama.

Lillian (Maya Rudolph) and Annie (Kristin Wiig) are BFF, until Lillian suddenly finds herself engaged, with a huge wedding to organise.

Of course she will turn to Annie as maid of honour to smooth out all the kinks and give her the send off she deserves, luckily the family are monied so all the usual high class US wedding cliche’s can be explored. Glorious bridal shower, wedding and bridesmaid dress rehearsals, glamorous wedding location and so on.

All of this would be fine, apart from the fact that Annie is having a bit of a crisis, what starts out as comedy, moves steadily towards life going seriously down the toilet, close to nervous breakdown territory.

The catalyst arrives in the form of the perfect unselected Maid of honour, Helen (Rose Byrne) the bored wife of the fiance’s boss. Together with Megan (McCarthy), Whitney (St Clair), Rita (Mc Lendon-Covey) and Becca (Kemper) the disparate group is complete.

The film is billed as a comedy and its starts promisingly enough as Annie displays self worth issues, demonstrated by her “friends with benefits” relationship, with the spectacularly self absorbed Ted (Hamm). Once the wedding planning starts in anger however, the competitiveness to be Lillian’s best friend, starts to get out of control and starts messing with her head and life.

What follows are set pieces, some gross but funny, some neither gross nor funny (Plane sequence) and some funny and sweet. Whilst disappointing in parts, the overall film is enjoyable but it is certainly more serious than you might be expecting.

Many comments describe the film as hilarious but like many films of this type, there is a dark vein of humour at work. Emotions are played for real and occasionally it feels uncomfortable next to the knockabout fart jokes. We liked the brother and lazy sister lodgers, “put some peas on that” and Annie will certainly win no awards for salesperson of the year, but in doing so provides some of the strongest scenes in the film.

Annie’s relationship with Lillian, her Mum and the local cop, who seems to get all the best lines, holds the film together and provides a good counterpoint to some of the craziness on display. There remains a more touching, sweet film in the edit somewhere, although box office numbers would undoubtedly have suffered as a result.

Wiig can act and the cast do good work around her, McCarthy playing almost a female version of Alan (Galifanakis) from the Hangover, also getting some good lines along with the cynical Rita and her devil spawn children – “I could have cracked the sheet”.

Not always as funny as the film thinks it is but certainly no exclusive chick flick either, male viewers may not be the target audience but will certainly find plenty to enjoy.

Summary

Arriving as a cross between “The Hangover” and “The Full Monty” in tone and style, “Bridesmaids” taken at face value, is an enjoyable enough night out for Fiancees and Fiance’s alike.