Girls Trip, directed by Malcolm D. Lee, is one of those movies where you miss chunks of dialogue because you're laughing so hard at the last line. You leave the theatre with a pain in your side from laughing constantly for nearly two hours. It also has a message at the center the feels organic and truthful. I can't help comparing Girls Trip to one of my all-time favorite comedies, Bridesmaids. Although the two films are quite different in tone (and, uh, skin tone since Bridesmaids has primarily white actors and Girls Trip primarily black...more on this in a minute), they both have a similar heart--they are intensely raunchy films that also manage to feel elegant and honest.
Girls Trip follows a group of college friends who, despite their insanely busy lives as grown women, reunite to attend the Essence Fest in New Orleans. The leader of the pack is Ryan Pierce (Regina Hall), a wildly successful author whose latest book about her marriage and career, titled You Can Have It All, is the reason the ladies are headed to NOLA. Ryan is one of the speakers at the event. As you can probably guess from the title of her book, Ryan's life is, in fact, not perfect and her marriage seems ready to implode at any moment. Her husband, Stewart (Mike Colter of Luke Cage) is a stone-cold fox but is unfaithful, and when a picture emerges online of him canoodling with a social media star, Simone (Deborah Ayorinde), Ryan's girlfriends are ready to tear him apart and build her up.
The plot is pretty typical of a "gal pals gone wild" movie--in NOLA, hijinks abound involving drugs, drinks, men, and--in the most memorable scene--a zip line.
Beyond the actual film itself, seeing Girls Trip was a unique experience for me because for probably the first time ever I was a minority in a mostly black audience. It made me realize how "white" my moviegoing choices are (Manchester by the Sea, anyone?) and just how white most movies in general are. I live in Richmond, VA for god's sake! It's a really diverse town. But with the exception of seeing Get Out earlier this year, where the audience was about 50/50 black and white, I have never been to a movie where POC outnumber whites.
As with most comedies and horror movies, seeing the film in the theatre with a large, enthusiastic audience is half the point. Comedies are funnier with the people around you are laughing hysterically and horror movies scarier when everyone else is screaming and jumping out of their seats. The audience of Girls Trip definitely added a lot to the experience.
A couple quibbles I had with the movie that keep me from giving it a higher rating: it was definitely formulaic, down to the categorization of the friends. There's the prudish one, the slutty one, the leader and the second banana to the leader. Not unlike Sex and the City which brought us all the lovely shorthand of being able to say "You're such a Samantha".
But the biggest problem I had was that of the "other woman" trope. The plot revolves around Ryan's husband cheating on her with a woman named Simone. While the ladies of Girls Trip give Stewart (Ryan's husband) a lot of grief, they also take every opportunity to shit on Simone. This is the fault, I think, of the writers of the film who take the easy way out in creating a villain. Simone is written as a complete bitch who shows up to Essence Fest and rubs the fact that she's sleeping with Stewart in Ryan's face. I found it to be over-the-top and phony. When you have a movie about the importance and sacredness of female friendship, do you really need to have a female character you can call a ho at every turn?
Other than those quibbles, Girls Trip was a lot of fun and, at the risk of "woke-signaling", it was awesome to be able to support a movie with four amazing women of color as the leads with my money and time. In fact, it was easy, since it was so much fun.
Grade: B
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