Melissa McCarthy's Weltanschauung

“You dress like you’re grocery shopping at a CVS,” Michelle Darnell (Melissa McCarthy) remarks to her assistant, Claire (Kristen Bell), a single mother who is about to go out on a date in The Boss. On a the Richter scale of laughs it’s about a #3, but it also is a peculiar little line since it has the appearance of an in- joke. The viewer knows what she’s talking since ostensibly he or she has, in fact, stooped to buying groceries at the CVS, Walgreen’s or even the dreaded Duane Reade. There are a couple of tony words worthy of comment in the movie. "Hangry" is a mutt created by angry and hungry and “vajunification” is an apparent neologism, but also brings to mind reunification which is what happened when the Berlin Wall came down. In poli sci when countries that have formerly been balkanized are brought back together, it’s called “irredentism.” But McCarthy who's given a script credit doesn’t go that far. The Boss lowers the bar for what is considered comic, not in terms of vulgarity. No one can beat the Farelly Brothers when it comes to that, but in terms of insipidness. But what’s interesting about the movie like her earlier  Identity Thief is the creation of the comic persona, which, one has a hunch, is a kind of cri de coeur. Both characters are suffering from a bad case of sour grapes (in the wake of being orphaned as children), having turned their disaffection from humanity into a profession. If the CVS quip makes you feel at home, you probably have also met Melissa McCarthy or the characters she plays before, the kind of person who failing to be good or attractive or both becomes good at being horribly bad, even repulsive in every way. Bridesmaids is probably one of the great comedies of all time. But watch out what you want for you might get it. McCarthy’s earlier success has obviously given her carte blanche to create a brand, and the brand is that of the fat girl who shows or tells all and makes you vomit. Waxing is so ubiquitous that it now appears like vapor emitted by serial killers in the London axe murder movies and sure enough there was the obligatory scene of McCarthy with her legs spread removing unwanted pubic hair while spraying herself with a self tanner. "It’s all good" says M.C. Hammer. We might not be able to say the reverse about The Boss, which bears an odd kinship with The Apprentice, but almost.

Trainwreck

To make a sick joke would you want Trainwreck to be your last film, the last film you saw before being gunned down? Unfortunately we’ll never be able to ask the victims of the horrific Lafayette, Louisiana shooting. But since political incorrectness is the lingua franca of a movie which is potentially offensive to so many constituencies, while ultimately remaining hilariously funny, your answer, after seeing it, may very well be a resounding “ yes." Amy Schumer plays a writer working at a magazine called  S’nuff which publishes articles with titles like: “Ugliest Celebrity Kids Under 6,” “How To Talk Your Girlfriend Into a Threesome,” “Whether Garlic Makes Semen Taste Any Different,’ “The Kids Michael Jackson Gave Settlements to” and “Are You Gay or Is She Boring?" Amy, whose attachment issues take the form of an inability to sustain anything but one night stands, starts the ball rolling by looking down at the enormous penis of one of her marks and asking “Have you ever fucked someone before? Where is she buried?” Her editor at the magazine the ruthlessly British Dianna (Tilda Swinton) confides to her “I fucked ¾ of Pink Floyd.” The complication of the film is that it deals in more than one liners. Amy is assigned to do a piece on the sports doctor to the stars, Aaron Campbell (Bill Hader). Against her own good sense, she falls for Aaron, who himself becomes the subject of an intervention by a roster of patients who include LeBron James, Chris Evert, Marv Alpert and Matthew Broderick, when his own career starts to falter. The movie is all over the place and, as you can see, in a big time way. Amy has a drinking problem too and the gags come fast and furious like a bar brawler throwing haymakers. But so many of them land that Trainwreck ends up tearing at both at your vocal chords (which will be strained from all the laughing) and heartstrings too. There'a a film within the film called The Dogwalker, a brilliant piece of deadpan comedy which adds another layer of grotesquery in its painting of a sadistic title character (Daniel Radcliffe) tied up in his own leashes. Amy’s father (Colin Quinn), who in a flashback describes his intention to divorce her mother by asking whether she and her sister would want to play with the same doll their whole lives, is one more example of a black humor that leans towards real darkness. It’s unlikely that a shooting in a Louisiana theater which happens to be playing a comedy would ever make it into a future Apatow film. But this very fine line between tragedy and comedy, between outrageousness and total tastelessness is one that Apatow, who produced Bridesmaids, appears qualified to negotiate.

The Heat

The comic premise behind The Heat is that a Yale educated FBI agent (Sandra Bullock) has to prove she can get along with a street smart South Boston cop (Melissa McCarthy) in order to get promoted. So we have the makings of a buddy movie in which opposites attract a la Rush Hour, Trading Places and Lethal Weapon. The Heat makes up for the lapse in female versions of the genre and aims to prove that what comes out of the mouths of its female leads can compete with Eddie Murphy, Chris Tucker or any other bad boy on camera. And if we were to judge the movie by this criteria--“tattle tits,” “boner killer,” “who closes the door when they take a shit,” “I’m going to get you a dick sucker for Xmas, so I don’t have to do it no more” are a few prize examples--The Heat is a mild success. It would be unfair to say that there aren’t some funny scenes in the movie which could be subtitled, “Six Jokes in Search of a Director,” but the set-up is so utterly contrived and tedious that The Heat, is an essay on everything that a high concept movie shouldn’t be. It's actually work to take the wind out of Melissa McCarthy’s sails. So what went wrong? “What does laughter mean?” Henri Bergson once asked. If only someone could come up with a formula which explained what goes wrong here, but let’s just say that like Miss Havisham two talented comedians are caught up in the cobwebs of an utterly listless script and choreography. Melissa McCarthy’s got the anarchic force of a great comedian, but she has to be more selective, if she wants to repeat her tour de force performance in Bridesmaids. The Heat like a previous film Identity Thief is merely a worthy idea. But it’s the execution not the premise that creates the humor.

Bridesmaids

Every once in a while a movie comes along that is fucked up in a really wonderful way. Bridesmaids is what Hollywood used to call a high-concept movie. It’s the country cousin of Wedding Crashers, both in theme and in its capacity for a kind of foolhardy farce that is like a serial killer with bad aim. More often than not it doesn’t hit the mark, but when it does you can’t help but yelp. Annie (Kristen Wiig) and Helen (Rose Byrne) are rivals for the attention of the bride, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), and the competitiveness starts off from the beginning when one of them tries to out do the other with nostalgic anecdotes. Helen renders an overly long Thai proverb in Thai only to have the mike grabbed away by Annie, who attempts, but fails, to reciprocate in Spanish. Annie arranges a dinner for all the bridesmaids that ends in food poisoning and, in an homage to Monty Python, projectile vomiting. The scene concludes with the bride taking a dump in the middle of a crowded street in her wedding dress. Underneath this female version of Animal House lurks yet another story about a character trapped in her own negative projections about the world. Annie’s business enterprise, a cake shop, has failed, but she is unable to weather the storm since it reinforces her philosophic view that all human relationships and enterprises are doomed to failure. Her mother, played by the recently deceased Jill Clayburgh, is an avid AA member, even though she’s never had a drink, and as her daughter engineers her own downward spiral, she insists that Annie has to reach a bottom. As incongruous as such a serious character portrait might seem amidst all the comic haymakers, it works, and is as terribly interesting as the it is terrible. Bridesmaids is a jumble of silliness that lacks pacing but manages to go everywhere and nowhere at the same time.