Bridesmaids

This female-bromace from the very talented Kristen Wiig is every bit as forced and muddled as the other films from uber-producer Judd Apatow.  Like most contemporary comedies it derives its humor from how much it can embrace and shame its main characters in the first two acts, and then it magically brings them around to a false happy ending in the third—but rarely do we get a movie as desperate to get laughs as Bridesmaids.  Yes, there are some pretty funny sequences here, but they are mostly craven and forced.  Wiig and her costars are worthy of something so much better and more true to life than this picture, which never rises above what it so clearly is trying to be: a female version of the choppy, uneven, over-long, unfocused, low-brow, falsely-sentimental, Apatow male-bonding-through-discomfort formula.