The grossout slapstick of a few years ago has given way to films for thirtysomethings dealing with the dilemmas of commitment
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
As a seasoned cinema hack, I thought I was immune to all of the industry's cheap come-ons ? starting with the movie trailer. So, in 2009, I was surprised at how easily I was skewered by the promo for a film that was picking up buzz as a smart new comedy: The Hangover. Stinking headaches, waking up in splendid disarray, morning-after postmortems: these things were near and dear to me. I was in my early 30s, and slap-bang in the middle of a run of births and marriages (not mine), as well as the boozy marker-posts ? stag dos and head-wettings ? that accompanied them. I was at the centre of a demographic bullseye, and The Hangover trailer did a number on me. I needed to see that film.
The Leicester Square crowd I finally watched it with were a bit subdued, and that was my response, too. But The Hangover ended up as the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time, and it confirmed a new trend. The kind of bawdy, sexually explicit antics that began with Porky's and resurfaced in the teenage and twentysomething-targeted "grossout" movies of the late 90s were extending their hold in films for those a little older. In fact, there's been a surge of thirtysomething comedy of all kinds in the last five years, not just the letting-rip school: The Break-Up; Role Models; I Love You, Man; Couples Retreat; Little Fockers; Hot Tub Time Machine; The Switch; The Dilemma; Hall Pass and Due Date ? to list the "canon". Despite their jokey exterior, most had big things on their mind, fretting over marriages and babies, breakups and single life; less "grossout" comedy than "freakout". And this week comes Bridesmaids, the so-called women's riposte to The Hangover.
"These days, your 20s are a time to explore and see the world, and try different jobs," says Scott Moore, co-writer of The Hangover and the forthcoming The Change-Up. "It's super-fun, but it's a time when there's not a lot at stake. There's not a lot of jeopardy. So it doesn't give you a very dramatic movie. In your 30s, the stakes are higher. If you pick the wrong person, the rest of your life could be a train wreck. If you land in the wrong job, it could be a problem."
Moore and Jon Lucas, his writing partner, have stuck with this dramatic hot spot, but in The Change-Up fast-forward a few years on from the bachelor-party scenario. It's a body-swap comedy in which beleaguered father Jason Bateman has a Face/Off-style exchange with steadfast singleton Ryan Reynolds so each can enjoy the perks of the other's lifestyles. There in high-concept miniature are all the dilemmas of virtually every freakout comedy: married thirtysomething or carefree flirtysomething? Kids or career? Is it possible to turn the clock back? How long is it acceptable to keep, as Lucas puts it, "screwing around"?
Only recently have these questions become viable lifestyle options, says Bridesmaids star and writer Kristen Wiig: "I think times have changed a little bit, where people aren't getting married so young. Now if you go to a wedding and say you're not married, and never have been, and you're in your 30s, it's not as strange as it used to be. I think all that pressure to do those things is so ridiculous." Wiig says she wasn't consciously writing a comedy about her generation but that, asked by Judd Apatow to construct a star vehicle for herself after appearing briefly in Knocked Up, she instinctively followed the old dictate to write what she knew. Her character, Annie ? whose need to break the fuck-buddy holding pattern and sort out her life is shoved into sharp relief when best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged ? is apparently based on co-writer Annie Mumolo.
Moore and Lucas were also writing from experience: the idea for The Change-Up came out of the monthly steak dinners they have with their male friends. Both screenwriters are married with young children, but not all of their circle are. "The idea for the film came from the single guys asking the married guys what I thought were these ridiculous questions. So we started asking them ridiculous questions about being single," says Lucas, "and the sheer number of misunderstandings about each other's lives felt like comedic material."
Such thirtysomething quandaries, of course, are found in greater-than-average concentration in Hollywood, where a good deal of the writers, directors and executives fall into this group; this is one reason why so many of these films have been produced. One apocryphal story about The Hangover was that it was based on the stag night of Choke producer Tripp Vinson, who supposedly went awol from his own party. Lucas and Moore say these high jinks were invented by Warner Bros to promote the movie, but that the tale was taken as fact says something about prevailing age and attitudes in the studios. The only thing Hollywood loves more than making movies that nakedly reflect itself is making highly profitable movies that nakedly reflect itself. So the box-office takings of the key thirtysomething films has helped encourage the boom: The Hangover broke records, as has its sequel; Wedding Crashers ? which marked the transition from the Ben Stiller-Vince Vaughn-Owen Wilson fratpack axis of the early noughties to the freakout wave ? did $209m US domestic, making it 2005's top R-rated comedy.
One thing many of the new breed share is an oddly conflicted tone: larky and fractious at the same time. Due Date ? from The Hangover's director, Todd Phillips ? has line-for-line one of the sharpest scripts of the bunch but is almost scuppered by the sour note that crops up continually, stirred up by Robert Downey Jr's uncharacteristically uptight performance as a dad-to-be. The Dilemma, which largely consists of Vince Vaughn sweating over whether to tell his best buddy he's been cuckolded, is equally painful to watch in its desperate attempts to manufacture comedy. Get it really wrong, like in the repellent Couples Retreat, and the results are downright creepy: only in Los Angeles could guilt-tripping your friends into a new-age therapy marriage-counselling camp seem like a plausible idea for two hours of unbridled escapism.
A piercing note of anxiety about modern relationships seems to be trying to break through, and it's not easy to balance this elegantly with comedy. Bridesmaids is probably the most successful so far, managing to candidly talk up Annie's commitment-phobia, loneliness and self-sabotage until they hit hilarious pitch. The bromance sub-genre suggests a perpendicular solution to similar issues: friendship replaces sex, and in the sharp Role Models, bromantically involved Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott also form surrogate parental bonds with feckless males-in-training Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Bobb'e J Thompson. Much of the rest of the freakout brigade sits more uneasily, as if they'd rather be addressing serious life concerns in a more straightforward way. But they don't inhabit the comedy-drama crossover with the same twitchy verve as Woody Allen, who explored similar territory back in the 70s, or even Apatow, whose pensive influence hangs over the sub-genre.
None of the freakout comedies are great works of cinema, but there's something mesmerising about them collectively, about their tonal agonies and their air of indecision. It's as if the American entertainment machine is struggling to work something out of the national psyche. Ron Howard's The Dilemma, especially, harps on about the automobile industry and team sports as if nervously massaging the US ego. One generation further back, liberated from child-rearing and not drowning in debt, the baby boomers seem less troubled. The spate of films for "seniors" I reported on last year deals with similar concerns ? men in crisis, the price of long-term commitment ? but have a lot more fun. But Kevin Loader, producer of Enduring Love, puts his finger on what unites western boomers and their children: "I think the business of ageing is something that American culture struggles with. They live in a culture that is obsessed with youthfulness."
The thirtysomethings' answer to these unsettling truths is to sink down to the eyeballs in a time-travelling jacuzzi. Hot Tub Time Machine was the film that literally dealt in nostalgia, but it recurs heavily in all of these comedies. Mike Tyson was a pop-culture adrenalin shot to perk up the audience two-thirds of the way through The Hangover (following similar cameos by Neil Patrick Harris in Harold and Kumar Get the Munchies and Bill Murray in Zombieland), but this retro apparition was a clue to how Lucas and Moore think about their comedy. "Part of The Hangover's appeal is that these people behave like total idiots, but also I think it's a nostalgic movie inherently," says Lucas, "It takes you back and you say, 'I remember those times ? man, weren't they fun?' Though I never had a tiger in my room."
Moore agrees that the function of their films is to reassure: "Most people tend to be living the more responsible life, and so they want that to be reaffirmed a little bit. They want that affirmation of: going out and partying and getting fucked up and doing crazy shit is really fun. But it's OK that I have a nine-to-five job, right? It's OK that I'm actually a little boring? At least personally I believe that, too. My personal theory is: everything in moderation."
Lucas concludes: "I think all of our movies are inherently conservative in the end. It's 99 pages of debauchery and one page of, 'Let's repair this.' It's not so much responsibility as what people want. I think people want to see people get together, grow up."
Not a sentiment you could offer to Bridesmaids's Annie at her blackest moments (I'm thinking the giant-cookie scene). But Kristen Wiig also had to make a decision how to wrap things up for the character ? a task complicated by the need not to impose conventional endings on female characters in the wake of a million patronising romcoms. The early drafts of Bridesmaids didn't feature a climactic wedding scene, but Wiig and Mumolo gradually began to feel it was required. "It's hard to solve all the script's problems with a tight little bow, but you want the audience to feel as if they've been on the ride for a reason," says Wiig.
Is it a soft ending? Is the film trying to have it both ways like The Hangover ? to celebrate freedom and commitment? That's debatable. But Bridesmaids doesn't sell its characters short and has been a deserved US smash. Wiig has earned the right to take her audience on to the next life stage with her next movie, Friends With Kids. She's preparing to exit her 30s in style, as one of US comedy's hottest prospects and a bona fide new star. That's one alternative to freaking out.
? Bridesmaids is out on Friday; The Change-Up is out on 5 August
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/22/bridesmaids-comedy-age-commitment
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