Girls Trip Review
R for crude and sexual content throughout, pervasive language, brief graphic nudity, and drug material
Universal Pictures, Will Packer Productions
2 Hrs and 2 Minutes
Cast: Regina Hall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tiffany Haddish, Queen Latifah, Kate Walsh, Mike Colter, Larenz Tate
INTRO: Recently there have been articles comparing two movies of this summer being exactly alike, and those films are Rough Night and Girls Trip. Personally, I don’t get the similarities. You have a movie starring comedians mostly from modern TV, and you have actors mostly from the 90s. One film is about women trying to hide a dead body, and the other is about women going on a trip to New Orleans. One movie is barely funny, and the other movie is consistently funny. This is the consistently funnier movie.
When four lifelong friends who call themselves the Flossy Posse travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival, sisterhoods are rekindled, wild sides are rediscovered, and there's enough dancing, drinking, brawling, and romancing to make the Big Easy blush.
THE GOOD: Opposed to the cast of Rough Night, the women of Girls Trip have amazing chemistry where they really feel like authentic friends. This factor is director Malcolm D. Lee’s strongest suit. Most similar to his Best Man movies, Lee excels most at having a large ensemble come together and bond so tightly that you wish to be part of their Flossy Posse. You can tell that offset they hang out often when the cameras aren’t rolling. There is the sense of these characters being friends more than an amalgamation of personalities clashing together and forced to claim themselves as friends. The chemistry shared between the four leads are so natural that it benefits the majority of the comedy that's thrown at you.
This is the second film I’ve ever seen her in, and not only has Tiffany Haddish has proven her comedic talents but she has also displayed the range she can go in her characters. Haddish plays Dina, the foul mouthed dirty girl of the group who you could’ve sworn came out of a Tyler Perry movie, but she gets the most laughs due to her unfluctuating charisma. Her character is the offensive friend who ad-libs the most, similar to a Jillian Bell or Zach Galifianakis type but the huge difference is that she’s both funny and likable.
You have this cast who audiences recognize in films since the early 2000s and Haddish fits right in even though she's new to the Hollywood scene. There so many scenes of her ad-libbing and prolonging many sequences and yet she manages to keep making you laugh. You may have seen her on The Carmichael Show or as the love interest for Jordan Peele in Keanu, but this is the big screen debut that will let the world know who Tiffany Haddish is. She steals the show as amazingly as Melissa McCarthy did in Bridesmaids and I hope she gets an Oscar nomination for her performance.
Another notable actress who provides an excellent performance is Jada Pinkett Smith. You have her character Lisa as the apprehensive friend of the group who plays everything safe. It's one of the funniest character types that are introduced in films like this because you know the longer her arc goes, the more let loose she becomes. Where in 2016, Pinkett-Smith had a minor role in Bad Moms to where she barely had any lines of dialogue, Girls Trip lets her inner Bad Mom out. Her performance reminds you that she is a natural talent and could do a lot more than having barely any words of dialogue.
The conflict of the film is the character dynamics between Ryan (Hall) and Sasha (Latifah) because of their occupations. Hall is the successful writer with cheating husband Luke Ca—I mean, Mike Colter and Latifah is the Harvey Levin of the group as she is a celebrity reporter. She’s pretty much a one woman TMZ. Their friendship is tested throughout the entire trip, and this subplot is the best thing about the film. It portrays the emotion of not seeing a friend for many years and losing that spark which these two characters. This is one of those comedies where all the characters are likable and have a high amount of charm.
The film takes place at Essence Fest, so there are a ton of cameos in the movie from famous artists ranging from the 90s to the 00s. It doesn’t do anything particularly smart with the cameos, but it takes advantage of who they manage to get. There's a P. Diddy cameo that is kind of funny, and he doesn’t have one line of dialogue.
Usually, the highlight sequence you tend to see in a numerous amount of raunchy comedies are of people tripping out in a crazy hallucination. Ranging from films such as 21 Jump Street, Wanderlust, and even Keanu, you have your main characters drinking or taking a drug and chaos ensues throughout. The highest bar to me is definitely the sequence in 21 Jump St where Schmidt and Jenko are tripping over H.F.S. This movie broke that bar. It features a contiguous five-minute sequence of the four leads including Kate Walsh hallucinating from a drink that Dina spiked. Not to give anything away, but once this sequence begins, brace yourself for a non-stop amount of laughs. Not only does the hallucination scene in this provide the most consistent laughs but it becomes the new golden standard of hallucination sequences in cinema, period.
This is one of those films that released for a particular demographic (which being African American women), but truthfully this is the perfect comedy for everyone. Under the story of friends going on a trip, the film is really about sisterhood and the power of friendship. Be warned, this is an R rated raunchy comedy so don’t take your kids at all. Even if they’re 15 or 16, I wouldn’t recommend it because they would not get any of the 90s references and nostalgia played into several sequences. All the jokes are sexual, and some of the gags are played for laughs and shock value, but for its audience, it's pretty refreshing. I took my mom to see the film and every person she recognized from the 90s got her excited as hell. If you're not laughing your ass off, you're most definitely going to be saying this a lot during the hard earned scenes of female empowerment
THE BAD: The movie’s plot goes from one convenience to another and unquestionably glosses over it as if it's nothing. All of the characters here have storylines that are so clichéd, you can foresee their entire arc of the movie right when they are introduced. What I like about the predictability though is that it doesn't become the film it baits to be in some scenes. You know where in movies the entire plot is centered around friends who are unable to tell another friend about a secret involving their spouse? *cough* THE DILEMMA *end cough*
Thankfully, once that thread is teased and you’re wishing it doesn't become that movie, Dina or Sasha kicks it to the curb simply like this:
They are the characters who speak from both their mind and their heart even though one of them doesn’t have much of a mind. The movie is predictable as hell don’t get me wrong, but it never becomes that two-hour movie that is all about these girls keeping a secret from each other. It's more focused on them helping Ryan (Regina Hall) go through a breakup with her cheating husband Stuart (Mike Colter) who also is her entrepreneur partner while her girlfriends try to show her the path that being true to yourself is more important than being unhappily wealthy. It's the main plot, but there are way too many subplots that lose focus of that one.
Malcolm D. Lee is becoming the black Judd Apatow to me nowadays in the vein of his films comprising the running time of TWO HOURS! Girls Trip is an enjoyable raunchy comedy from beginning to end, but there is no need for this movie to be 122 minutes. Granted it features hysterical set pieces and an abundant amount of inventiveness throughout especially with its whole hearted message of sisterhood, but THERE IS NO REASON FOR THIS TO BE AS LONG AS IT IS!
If it could've edited out several sequences of Haddish ad-libbing or have the inevitable falling out scene occur twenty minutes earlier, it would've had a rather decent running time. Nope, it has to be two hours. Seriously, the falling out scene occurs literally at the hour and forty minute mark when you know the film is over in twenty minutes. Thankfully its humor doesn't go Tyler Perry levels of foolishness, but it goes to Tyler Perry territory with its length.
LAST STATEMENT: Despite its cliches and over long length, the powerful chemistry shared between its talented cast members especially from Tiffany Haddish makes Girls Trip is a refreshingly hilarious raunchy comedy that proves that raunchy comedies can be fun. Undoubtedly this is the best [mainstream] comedy of the summer.
Rating: 3.5/5 | 78%
Now here's a highlight of myself getting a chance to interact with Jada Pinkett Smith and Regina Hall on BUILD series.
