When four lifelong friends 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.
Girls Trip (2017)
Stars:
Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah play
college friends reuniting for a New Orleans weekend during the Essence
Festival in Malcolm D. Lee's sisterhood celebration.
It's barely been a month since the joyless Rough Night
came and went in a blur of indifference, and this new comedy on paper
could almost be the same movie — only with black sorority sisters and no
corpse to dampen the weekend getaway. The difference is that Girls Trip
actually delivers on its promise of a liberating good time, thanks in
large part to the spirited characterizations and believable chemistry of
its four immensely appealing leads. The progression from raunchy,
raucous laughs into dramatic conflict and then out the other side into
the uplifting empowerment of sisterhood and self-worth isn't entirely
seamless, but there's too much dizzy pleasure here to get hung up on the
flaws.
All that should spell "sweet summertime hit" for Universal,
especially with women, while confirming Malcolm D. Lee as a go-to
director for high-gloss entertainment built around successful, sexy
African-American characters. In the Best Man movies, he
explored how four longtime guy friends navigated various rivalries and
romances, their bonds outlasting their frictions. Working from a script
by Black-ish creator Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver, Lee mines
similar territory with the ladies this time, and again, his biggest
assets are strong casting and genuine affection for his characters.
The movie opens with a quick recap starting at college in 1992, when
the "Flossy Posse" first became an inseparable, hard-partying unit. The
closeness lasted through graduation and even later, but marriages,
careers and other inevitable divergent paths of adult life have weakened
what was meant to be a four-way lifelong union. Ryan Pierce (Regina
Hall), a popular self-help author whose latest best-seller is You Can Have It All,
decides to fix that when she's invited to be the keynote speaker at the
upcoming Essence Festival in New Orleans, reconvening the posse for a
luxury weekend of girl time.
Ryan's lily-white agent Liz (Kate Walsh), who likes to think she's in
on the "#BlackGirlMagic," is working on closing a massive deal during
the festival, setting up her star client and the latter's husband
Stewart (Mike Colter), a retired NFL player, with their own talk show
and product line.
Lee and the screenwriters establish the distinct personalities of the
four principal women with deft economy. Dina (Tiffany Haddish) is the
clown of the group, a man-crazy hothead who, in possibly the movie's
most hilarious scene, blithely steamrolls her boss as he's attempting to
fire her for assaulting a co-worker. Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith) has
traded in her former freaknik credentials to be a nurse and nurturing
mother of two, pretending not to mind the absence of romance since her
divorce. And Sasha (Queen Latifah) has moved from top-tier journalism
into bottom-feeder celebrity muckraking with a gossip site, whose backer
is threatening to pull the plug if she doesn't start coming up with
juicier items to goose ad revenue.
The requisite squealing airport reunion segues directly to the French
Quarter, with brass ensemble The Soul Rebels blasting Bill Withers'
"Lovely Day." Already, even before the boozing and carousing has fully
gotten underway, there's infectious enjoyment in watching these women
(both the characters and the performers) cut loose and have fun. But
when one of Sasha's regular paparazzi forwards her a photo taken the
night before of Stewart making out with Simone (Deborah Ayorinde), a
self-promoting "Instagram skank," a cloud is cast over the group,
revealing the cracks in Ryan's famously perfect world.
The setup is formulaic and the characters cut from familiar cloth,
but the template is fleshed out with freshness and verve as each woman
exhales alongside the three other people in the world who know her best.
Weaving through crowds on Bourbon Street or in the Superdome, where we
catch glimpses of concert performances by Common, Diddy and others, the
posse shake off the concerns of their regular existences, including
Ryan, whose professional responsibilities and marital troubles don't
inhibit her ability to get crazy.
The divine Hall is definitely not
straitjacketed by her designated role as "the responsible one," her
voice shifting into her trademark squawk in more excitable moments.
The sparkplug that repeatedly ignites them all is shameless
wild-child Dina, a role likely to be a breakout for the volcanically
funny Haddish, best known for The Carmichael Show. And when she
scores some 200-year-old absinthe (from Mike Epps in a cameo), ignoring
the "imbibe with caution" warning, their night out turns hallucinogenic
— Girls "Trip," geddit?
There's a cute moment around that point where the movie acknowledges
the screen history of Latifah and Pinkett Smith by having them exchange a
knowing look when Dina ushers them into a dance club, shouting, "C'mon,
bitches, let's set it off!" It's followed by that most time-honored of
female smackdowns, a dance-off against the aggressively adversarial
Simone and her girls, which only makes the scene more irresistible.
The two posse members who have suffered betrayal or neglect both get
to feel like queens again through some avid male attention. Ryan gets
drawn into a flirtatious knot with Julian (Larenz Tate), a college
friend who has filled out nicely and now plays bass for Ne-Yo; and
frisky young stranger Malik (Kofi Siriboe) sets his sights on prim Lisa,
even before she's unleashed. His intimidating endowment prompts a
tutorial from Dina in "grapefruiting." Don't ask. Haddish tackles most
of the more outrageously vulgar end of the comedy spectrum, and while it
occasionally gets a tad gross, her fearlessness is breathtaking. Though
did we really need not one but two golden showers raining down on New
Orleans revelers?
Lee lets the pacing lag once uncomfortable reality intrudes, and the
public humiliation of Ryan causes her to doubt Sasha's loyalty. That in
turn sparks animosity amongst all four friends in a somewhat rote
development. But such rifts are necessary in order to be mended in
movies like this, and the warm feelings engendered toward the characters
make you root for their inevitable happiness — and the strengthened
renewal of their sisterhood — even if they're more diverting company in
down-and-dirty mode than soft-and-fuzzy.
At just over two hours, the movie could be tighter and some of its
transitions more elegant. But the vibrancy of the authentic New Orleans
locations and the bustle of the Essence crowds (Mariah Carey, Kenneth
"Babyface" Edmonds, Ava DuVernay and Best Man alum Morris
Chestnut are among familiar faces glimpsed) keep things humming. Mostly,
however, it's the likability of the cast and their relaxed rapport
together that maintains the flow even in weak script spots. Lee rolls
the end credits on a suitably celebratory image of all four leads,
dressed to slay and shimmying through the Quarter in the midst of a
brass-band parade. They look like they're having a ball.
Production companies: Universal Pictures, Perfect World Pictures, Will Packer Productions
Distributor: Universal
Cast: Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Larenz Tate, Mike Colter, Kate Walsh, Kofi Siriboe, Deborah Ayorinde
Director: Malcolm D. Lee
Screenwriters: Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver
Story: Erica Rivinoja, Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver
Producers: Will Packer, Malcolm D. Lee
Executive producers: Preston Holmes, James Lopez
Director of photography: Greg Gardiner
Production designer: Keith Brian Burns
Costume designer: Danielle Hollowell
Music: David Newman
Editor: Paul Millspaugh
Casting: Mary Vernieu, Michelle Wade Byrd
Distributor: Universal
Cast: Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Larenz Tate, Mike Colter, Kate Walsh, Kofi Siriboe, Deborah Ayorinde
Director: Malcolm D. Lee
Screenwriters: Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver
Story: Erica Rivinoja, Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver
Producers: Will Packer, Malcolm D. Lee
Executive producers: Preston Holmes, James Lopez
Director of photography: Greg Gardiner
Production designer: Keith Brian Burns
Costume designer: Danielle Hollowell
Music: David Newman
Editor: Paul Millspaugh
Casting: Mary Vernieu, Michelle Wade Byrd
Rated R, 122 minutes
7/10 genre
7/10 overall
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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