Bridesmaids is a 2011 American comedy film directed by Paul Feig. The screenplay was written by Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, who also stars in the movie as a woman who faces many problems after being asked to be the maid of honor for her best friend, played by Maya Rudolph. Other actors in the film include Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, Melissa McCarthy, and Chris O'Dowd.
Mumolo and Wiig wrote the screenplay after Wiig was cast in Knocked Up (2007), a comedy directed by Judd Apatow. The film was released in the United States on May 13, 2011, by Universal Pictures. It received praise and was popular, earning over $306.5 million worldwide with a budget of $32.5 million. It became the most successful film produced by Apatow at the time. At the 84th Academy Awards, Melissa McCarthy was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and Wiig and Mumolo were nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
Bridesmaids has been a topic for discussions about women in comedy. Many publications have listed it as one of the best comedy films of the 21st century.
Plot
Annie Walker is a young, single woman who lives in Milwaukee. After the Great Recession, her bakery closed, and she now works a stressful, low-paying job at a jewelry store. She shares an apartment with roommates who are often annoying. She has casual relationships with Ted, a wealthy and self-centered man. The only positive part of her life is her best friend, Lillian.
When Lillian becomes engaged to her boyfriend, Doug, she asks Annie to be her maid of honor. At the engagement party, Annie meets Lillian’s other bridesmaids: Lillian’s cousin Rita, Lillian’s coworker Becca, Doug’s sister Megan, and Helen, the wife of Doug’s boss. Annie and Helen both feel jealous of each other’s close friendships with Lillian and compete for Lillian’s attention.
After the party, Annie is pulled over by Officer Nathan Rhodes because she is driving erratically. She takes a sobriety test and passes it, but she gets a ticket for broken brake lights. Officer Rhodes learns that Annie once owned a bakery called "Cake Baby." He agrees to remove the ticket if she fixes her tail lights.
Annie takes Lillian and the bridesmaids to a Brazilian restaurant and then to a high-end bridal-dress store. All of them, except Helen, get very sick from eating the food. At the store, Rita vomits into a toilet, Becca vomits on Rita, and Megan uses the bathroom sink inappropriately. Lillian, wearing a fancy wedding dress, tries to find another bathroom but ends up having an accident in the street.
Annie suggests a bachelorette party at Lillian’s parents’ lake house, but Helen plans a trip to Las Vegas instead. On the plane, Annie takes a sedative and alcohol from Helen to calm her fear of flying. She becomes very drunk and acts aggressively toward airline staff. She starts hallucinating and has a breakdown, leading to her being taken into custody by an Air Marshal. The plane makes an emergency landing, and the group returns home by bus. Lillian lets Helen take over planning the bridal shower and wedding after Annie asks her to.
Meanwhile, Annie grows closer to Nathan Rhodes, who once visited her bakery and encourages her to open a new one. After a romantic night together, she leaves suddenly when Nathan surprises her with baking supplies the next day.
After being fired from her job for arguing with a customer and being evicted by her roommates, Annie moves in with her mother. She travels to Helen’s home in Chicago for Lillian’s Paris-themed bridal shower, an idea Annie had that Helen had previously rejected. Helen upstages Annie’s gift by giving Lillian a trip to Paris, which makes Annie angry. She loudly criticizes Helen and Lillian and destroys the decorations. This causes a fight between Annie and Lillian, ending with Annie being disinvited from the wedding.
While driving home, Annie’s broken tail lights cause a car accident. Officer Nathan arrives and scolds her for not taking care of herself. Ted later offers her a ride but asks her to perform an inappropriate act, which makes her refuse and walk home.
Megan visits Annie and encourages her to take control of her life. Annie fixes her car and tries to reconnect with Nathan, but he ignores her. On the day of the wedding, Helen asks Annie for help finding Lillian. During their search, Helen admits she feels lonely despite her success in event planning and is unhappy in her marriage.
With Nathan’s help, Annie and Helen find Lillian, who had become overwhelmed by Helen’s wedding plans and was afraid to leave Milwaukee. Annie reconciles with Lillian and resumes her role as maid of honor. After the wedding, Annie and Helen hug, ending their conflict. Nathan arrives unexpectedly, picks up Annie, and they share a kiss before leaving together in his police car.
Cast
Major uncredited appearances include: Jon Hamm as Ted, a friend of Annie's; Grammy Award-winning accordionist, pianist, and composer Nick Ariondo as the accordion player; and Pat Carroll, who has won Emmy, Drama Desk, and Grammy Awards, as the old woman in the car.
The film's co-writers, Wiig and Annie Mumolo, appear together when Mumolo plays the nervous woman on the plane, and director Paul Feig appears uncredited as a wedding guest.
Paul Rudd was originally cast to appear as a man Annie goes on a blind date with, but that scene was removed from the final version of the film.
Mia Rose Frampton appears briefly as a thirteen-year-old girl who argues with Annie in the jewelry store. The film's Blu-ray release includes an extended, ten-minute scene with improvised dialogue between the two characters.
Wilson Phillips appear as themselves late in the film when they perform their song "Hold On."
Production
After the movie was finished, people began to notice its importance. At the time, the creators did not think it was any different from other comedies like The House Bunny or Baby Mama. They believed they were not making anything new, only having fun with the story.
The script, originally called Maid of Honor, was written by actress and screenwriter Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig. The two had been friends for many years and met in the early 2000s at The Groundlings, a comedy group in Los Angeles where they wrote jokes together. The idea for the film came in 2006, shortly after Wiig was cast in a supporting role in Knocked Up (2007), a comedy directed by Judd Apatow. Apatow, impressed by Wiig’s talent, asked if she had any screenplay ideas. This had worked before, such as with Steve Carell’s idea for The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005). Wiig and Mumolo then created Bridesmaids. Over the next few years, they wrote the script while Wiig worked on Saturday Night Live in New York and Mumolo worked in Los Angeles. They met on weekends to read drafts of the script for Apatow’s feedback. In 2007, filmmaker Paul Feig discovered their script. When Feig became the director and the film received approval to be made in 2010, he said, “There was a rule from Hollywood that said, ‘If this movie works, we’ll make more like it. If it doesn’t, we won’t.’ I was very worried because if it failed, I might be blamed for stopping future movies with female leads. Fortunately, it worked.”
Several actresses tried out for the role of Megan, including Rebel Wilson and Busy Philipps. Philipps had previously worked with Apatow and Feig on Freaks and Geeks, a comedy-drama series. Wilson performed for an hour without a script during her audition, which impressed the team so much that she was cast in the smaller role of Brynn. This was her first role in an American film, and she reportedly earned $3,500, which she used to pay fees to join the Screen Actors Guild. Mindy Kaling auditioned for the role of Lillian but lost to Maya Rudolph, who was a co-worker of Wiig on Saturday Night Live. Rose Byrne first tried out for Lillian but later auditioned for the role of Helen. Byrne was chosen for Helen because she was not a comedian, as Feig feared the character might be too exaggerated if played by a funny actress. Greta Gerwig and Judy Greer also auditioned for unspecified roles.
The film had a budget of $32.5 million. Though the story is set in Milwaukee and Chicago, most of the movie was filmed in Los Angeles. Production designer Jefferson Sage, who has worked with Apatow and Feig since Freaks and Geeks, said the project’s appeal was the contrast between two worlds: Annie’s life in Milwaukee and Helen’s in Chicago. This difference created a rivalry between the characters. Sage noted it was challenging to find buildings that looked like Midwestern cities. Chicago has unique architecture, and parts of Los Angeles were used to resemble it. The wedding of Lillian and Dougie was filmed at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. Scenes where Annie meets Officer Rhodes on highways between Milwaukee and Chicago were shot in Oxnard, California, a flat, green area far from mountains.
Reception
Bridesmaids received positive reviews when it was released, with praise for Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s screenplay and Melissa McCarthy’s performance. The review website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 89% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 292 reviews, with an average score of 7.50 out of 10. The site’s summary says: "A mix of real characters, humorous scenes, and emotional moments, Bridesmaids is a comedy focused on women that avoids being limited in its themes. Kristen Wiig shines as a standout performer." Metacritic gives the film a score of 75 out of 100 based on 39 critics, which means "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences who saw the film in theaters gave it an average grade of "B+" on a scale from A+ to F.
Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4 and said Bridesmaids "seems to be a deliberate effort to combine a romantic comedy with a raunchy (humorous and vulgar) comedy. It shows that women can be just as bold and honest about topics like relationships, drinking, and insecurities as men. Judd Apatow, the film’s producer, has consistently made movies that connect with audiences." Tamara Winfrey-Harris wrote in Ms. that she was surprised the film passed the Bechdel test, which means it features strong female characters and storylines, even though it was directed by Judd Apatow and included themes that have been used before.
Critic Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly said the success of Bridesmaids shows Hollywood should understand that a comedy that is both bold and honest about women’s lives can appeal to older audiences, not just teenagers. Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon called the film "the first black president of female-driven comedies" and said it was a breakthrough for comedies focused on women and feminist themes. The film was also praised for proving that women could handle raunchy humor as well as men and for leading an all-female cast to box office success. The performance of actor Simon Pegg, despite his limited screen time, also received positive reviews.
Not all critics were positive. Abby Koenig of The Houston Press appreciated Kristen Wiig’s comedy skills but disliked the number of raunchy jokes, saying, "We need more funny female characters in movies, but we also need women who can make us laugh without showing scenes that are too gross." Karina Longworth of The Village Voice criticized the film for having inconsistent tone, saying some scenes were too crude and did not match the film’s thoughtful exploration of female friendships and competition.
In 2021, members of the Writers Guild of America West and East ranked Bridesmaids’ screenplay 12th on their list of the 101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (so far). In 2025, the film ranked number 32 on The New York Times’ list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century" and number 90 on the "Readers’ Choice" edition of the list.
Bridesmaids became the top-grossing Judd Apatow production, earning $26,247,410 on its opening weekend and finishing second behind Thor. It made $169,451,048 in North America and $119,635,696 internationally, totaling $289,086,744. Universal reported that 33% of the audience was male and 63% were over the age of 30. Judd Apatow said the film’s international success was a surprise, as the idea of bridesmaids is not common in many cultures.
Melissa McCarthy was nominated for the 2011 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.
Home media
The movie Bridesmaids was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in two versions: the theatrical version (125 minutes) and the unrated version (130 minutes) on September 20, 2011. Special features included a Line-O-Rama (a feature commonly found in Apatow productions), deleted scenes, extended scenes, alternate scenes, and a commercial for Cholodecki's jewelry store. Another edition, created to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Universal Studios, was released on September 4, 2012.
Scuttled sequel
There was interest in making a follow-up movie to Bridesmaids. Producer Apatow said, "The most important thing is to create an idea that is as good or better than the first movie." Director Paul Feig added, "One problem is that everyone is very busy and doing their own things, but we are open to making a sequel." When asked if she might be involved, Wiig told The Hollywood Reporter, "We are not working on a sequel. Annie Mumolo and I are not planning one. We are writing a different project instead." After Wiig's statement, reports said Universal wanted to move forward without her, instead creating a story about McCarthy's character, Megan. McCarthy denied the rumors that she would return for a sequel without Wiig. She said, "I would never want to do that. I think it's a bad idea. I don't know anything about it. However, I know that no one would want to do it unless it's excellent. If it is, I will be there wherever those ladies are."