My Thoughts On Bridesmaids

So I went to see Bridesmaids, last Wednesday. And although I laughed my ass off and loved every funny second of it, there was one moment in the film that for some unaccountable reason made me cry. Not tears of laughter crying - real crying, of the kind you usually only do when a shark eats a seal on Animal Planet or Ripley dies in Alien 3.*

It's the bit where Melissa McCarthy's character says to Kirsten Wiig's character that she has a best friend right here, in her. And it wasn't a fake, sappy moment, and it wasn't the point where Annie turned all of her life around. It was just this weird, plain-faced girl saying to some other girl - I'm your friend.

And I just found that so...I don't know. Overwhelming. Same thing when the pretty one said she had no female friends. In fact, the whole film had this undercurrent of how hard it is to actually make friends and have them stick by you no matter what and so and so forth, and for some reason that really affected me.

In fact, I'm not even going to say "for some reason" there. I'm just going to flat out state it: I can completely relate to that. It's not because I'm too weird, either, because although there's an element of that, I know it's mainly my fault. I'm annoying, I'm abrasive. I say all the wrong things and then only later am sensible of saying the wrong things but have absolutely no idea how to apologise about them because if I apologise, it will seem as though I knew I was saying something bad in the first place.

I try to give advice, but it just comes out like I'm being a know-it-all. All my life I've been a know-it-all, and the thing about being one is you can't stop yourself. You try, but there's just so much stupid stuff in your head that most of it keeps leaking out and then it's all fuck you, apple polisher.

I am a social dunderhead.

So I guess what I'm saying is: it was really nice to see a movie where someone as wonderful as Melissa McCarthy, someone actually stranger than myself, got to be onscreen in all of her plump, weird, mad clothes wearing no make-upped glory, and was not only held up as something fun and interesting but also as a decent person. Who then just flat out asked someone else to be BFFs with them.

I don't think anyone's ever asked me to be their BFF. I can't even imagine what I would do if Melissa McCarthy asked me to be hers. It would probably make my life, because not only is she an absolutely orsum human being in Bridesmaids - she takes nine puppies! She identifies an air marshal correctly and then sleeps with him! - she's pretty much the most brilliant best friend in everything she's in.

In Gilmore Girls, she put up with Lorelai even though Lorelai is pretty much an insufferable human being ninety percent of the time. I mean I love her, and she's funny and smart and cool to watch, but in reality she would have probably driven someone as sweet as Sookie nuts in about thirty seconds and then Lorelai would have had to go live in her Mother's basement with ninety cats, or summat.

Which is undoubtedly my fate. I mean, once the zombies invade my husband has absolutely no chance - he won't even practice barring all the doors! - and all of the friends I do have are either equally as zombie unsavvy or live miles away. And though I'd like to say that I'd be able to cross the apoclaypse ravaged landscape and get to the three other people who can stand me in all the world, I know the truth.

I'd hide in a basement somewhere, with ninety cats.

But you know, I don't think it was just the friendship thing that so affected me about Bridesmaids. There was something else about it - something like the heralding of a new dawn. There were women on screen, doing things I've never seen women doing before.

And no, I don't mean the shitting in the street thing. I mean stuff like...sleeping with some guy in a self-destructive way but totally knowing it and doing it anyway. I mean like hitting rock bottom and not having some dude drag you out. In reality, there rarely IS some dude. There's usually nothing and you really do end up living with your mum, without a job or a life or any friends.

Not every woman is Jennifer Lopez in the Back Up Plan, whose biggest problem is that ALEX O'LOUGHLIN IS KIND OF UNSURE ABOUT RAISING BABIES THAT ARE NOT HIS.

I mean, really? Really? I'd be happy just to smell Alex O'Loughlin's breath. After he put it in a jar and mailed it to me. That's right: I'd be happy with secondhand O'Loughlin breath, that's really probably just a fart his assistant trapped in there, for a laugh.

I don't like "chick flicks" because for the most part, they're not aimed at any chick I know. They don't represent me. I don't even particularly like them in an escapist, glossy sort of way because in order for me to buy things like "she has to choose between Armie Hammer and Jon Hamm to raise her quintuplets" I need to believe in her.

But I believe in Kristen Wiig. I believe in Melissa McCarthy. Dear God, I hope they do a sequel, quick.



*I accept that you might cry at different, normal things. Like accidentally cutting your finger off, for example.