Bridesmaids

After games I headed for the nearby Cineworld to point my "Unlimited card" at whatever happened to be about to start. It turned out to be Bridesmaids, which hadn't particularly impressed me when I saw the trailer and for which I presumed I was definitely not the target audience, being somewhat too old and male.

I'm not a huge fan of relentlessly scatalogical "gross-out" films, although at times I like a well done fart joke as well as the next man, and was not encouraged when the entire bunch of matrimonial misfits suffered "food poisoning" with the "gag" underlined by gurglng and flatulent noises to leave you in no doubt that the expensive designer dresses they were trying on, were probably going to be beyond cleaning. Joining the girls in the bathroom where they were vomiting on each other, while the scariest of them defecated in the sink, caused my heart to sink further at the same time as I gave thanks that I had forgone the Ben and Jerry's.

There were some upsides however: While our own Matt Lucas gave a fairly forgetable performance in a minor role, Chris O'Dowd from "The iT Crowd" gave us his State Patrol cop in a strangely compelling way. Totally unlikely as the character was, (Chris remains stubbornly Irish but although Annie, the main protagonist, points out that only citizens of the U.S. can become policemen, and he agrees, how he ends up in this situation is never explained), I was happily complicit in this bizarre warping of reality.  In fact, both he and Kristen Wiig as Annie are endearing despite the excesses of the physical comedy and while the rest of the cast is full of stereotypes and the plot predictable, I could stand to spend some more time with Rhodes and Annie, against all my expectations. I'm still not sure I understand why it was programmed at the local arthouse cinema as well though.