2011

LANDED LIKE an oestrogen-studded bomb in 2011, blowing apart almost every single assumption about female-fronted comedies. That they were too big a risk. That they wouldn’t make any money. That men wouldn’t buy a ticket (because, ewww, women making jokes). That women would be too busy buying adidn’t want to watch funny women, so what sense would it make to produce a film that relied on both these maxims being dead wrong? It’s fair to say that cinema oftentimes likes its comfort zone. But challenged the softness under its arse — even if it did so in the Trojan horse of a ‘wedding movie’. The wedding, as it turned out, was the least important bit of the story, co-written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. Annie (Wiig) is doing a job she hates (and which she is terrible at, spectacularly calling one teenage customer “a little cunt”), living in a weird flatshare and attempting a relationship with a fuck-buddy (Jon Hamm) who is all fuck and no buddy. All of which is brought into sharp focus when her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged.