One can agree to disagree on subjective opinion, but not on objective fact.
If one doesn't find Bridesmaids funny, fair enough.
90% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with a slightly lesser score of 76% Audience score.
Spy fared even better, 95% Fresh, 85% Audience score.
It's all well and good if you don't like these movies and don't think they're funny. But it's a whole other thing to say Feig, et al, haven't made movies that were critically and/or financially successful.
I don't like Tim Burton; but, I'm not going to sit here and say that his films don't have a cult following. I haven't seen a Tarantino film that I truly enjoyed; but, I'm likewise not going to pretend like he is not critically and financially successful because his works don't resonate with me.
It's a very common mistake, to equate quantity with quality, but a mistake nonetheless. If 6 million people buy your album it doesn't mean that even one of them loved it. Just that at least 6 million found it tolerable enough to buy.
Also, don't make assumptions, particularly when the thread you're in refutes them. I've already mentioned here that I did not only see both Bridesmaids and Heat (and thus contributed to their financial success whether I wanted to or not). I enjoyed Bridemaids, found Heat tiresome. And not ONE original moment in either movie. If you did, I can only assume that you don't watch comedies very often, because it was 100% dehydrated comedy, just add water from start to finish.
Now I happen to be someone who can enjoy that. As I said...I liked Bridesmaids. I can watch Romcom retreads in the same way that horror fans can enjoy 50 different versions of the same exact killing spree with slightly different mask on the Scooby-Doo villain. And lucky for me, there's at least 20 a year for me to enjoy. But that doesn't mean any of them are great cinema. In fact few of them are. I still watch them anyway, like entertainment junk food.
Ghostbusters was one of the best. Bridesmaids was not.
The only insulting party I see here is you. All you're saying is that McCarthy being cast in a movie automatically means she's playing the fat boar. Based on what? Watch any of those three films and say with a straight face that whenever Melissa McCarthy is on screen that the film constantly makes a joke out of her because she's overweight.
Do you actually watch any of the films you mentioned? Is English even a language you speak? I'm fairly certain that in at least Bridesmaids and Heat that was the actual name of her character in the working scripts.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. John Belushi, Chris Farley, Kevin James, Roseanne...even all the way back to the classics like Gleason and Costello, and even earlier in the stage shows that predated modern television and movies, it's been a solid comedic go-to character. It's a good stock choice, but you come off as well beyond naive in somehow managing the Herculean feat of thinking that it's in any way original at this point.
.....
The real problem we come back to is...HOW is any of this original? They are women. And this is...1912 and we've never had that before? I get that in action movies and comic book movies there's a thing right now about wanting more female leads, but realistically, up until recently, women weren't in those audiences. Now they are, and in big numbers, and Hollywood is having some trouble playing catch up.
But comedy? If you're going to pretend that Feig is somehow breaking new ground with comedic females, then I suggest that there's a literal TON of comedy movies out there that you absolutely HAVE to see because you clearly don't know what you're missing. Not only has it been done, but it's been done WAY better than Feig in his best daydreams. I'd start in the 80's with films like 9 to 5, Heathers, Big Business and work your way through League of Their Own to newer films like Mean Girls, My Big fat Greek wedding, before moving back to the classics like Stage Door.
By the way, the odd couple theme (straight laced one, by the book, meets more relaxed, shoot from the hip, unconventional partner...sound familiar?) has not only been done, but done by men...then several female versions, then all the way around back to men again. It's a great concept and I can still enjoy it, but pretending that there's something original about it just because (gasp) you have women in comedy, is so far past the realm of naive that it ventures into the realm of...'are you even watching this in your native language?'
At this point, I'm more than a little sick of the BS sexist claims. To me: sexist is people who ignore the 80 damn years worth of female driven comedies as if nothing existed between 1912 and 2010.
TLDR version: I have no problem with rehashing the old stand-bys. Use the fat one for the more physical stuff, have one be by the book and the other the real play-by-their-own-rules type. Gender bending certain characters to keep it fresh (No guy wants to try to walk in John Gielgud's shoes, so try Hellen Mirren). But, I DO have a problem with pulling from the stock yard and claiming you did something original, and I have even more of a problem with people claiming it's somehow sexist to call them out on it. It's stock. You pulled from stock. Everyone does. Just own up to it. Don't pretend that everyone else is evil for noticing, that you're just pulling from stock.
