Girls Trip Review: Sleeper Hit of the Summer

It isn’t truly summer unless there’s a raunchy comedy on the calendar that you wanna talk about with your friends in the future. Especially, if it’s a female ensemble comedy that anyone can highly enjoy. Though this year in the comedy department has really been lacking, it could be a possibility that Girls Trip might be worth mentioning. You don’t even need to a dude to find something funny here.

Four best friends from college (Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith and Tiffany Haddish) known to them as the “Flossy Posse” reunite for a trip to New Orleans as one of them brought them all together as she has the keynote speaker at the festival. With that, it’s a weekend that’s full of drinking and having a fun time.

There wasn’t a moment where I thought the R-rated Girls Trip would be funny. As much I like the actresses in here, none of the trailers didn’t make me laugh as I thought it was going to be a throwaway comedy. Plus, this is the same summer that Rough Night came out. Kind of similar premises except for the dead stripper part. So with seeing after it’s been out for two weeks now, it made me worried that this was either going be another Rough Night or Bad Moms. This is what both of those films should’ve been in the first place as Girls Trip was hilarious all the way through. Just one of the biggest surprises of the year.

All of the performances here were excellent in a comedy like this. Hall stood on her own as always as this best-selling author and married to Luke Cage‘s Mike Colter; Pinkett Smith impressed to very much so in this as for some reason. I haven’t liked her most recently for some reason, but she was funny as a single mother who hasn’t dated anyone since her divorce; Latifah is basically her but in the best way as she’s a once-serious journalist, who is now working on her scandal blog. Also, I should also add that both Latifah and Pinkett Smith have reunited since Set it Off. But it’s Haddish (The Carmichael Show, Keanu) who’s the ultimate standout performer in this. In the same veins of Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids, Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover, or even Kate McKinnon in Ghostbusters, she provides the film biggest moments and she was great as being the funny one of the group with many problems. She could’ve been annoying throughout, but she handled the comedy to a great degree with everybody around her.

And this is laugh-out-loud hilarious in so many terms. To a surprise, one of the writers is Kenya Barris (Black-ish), which makes sense. Even when the story gets over-the-top, it manages to work in its favor. Everybody has their moment to shine and they are given funny material to work with. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s being ab-libbed because it’s outrageous what these characters say. The scenes that were funny from the trailers didn’t make me laugh in there. But in the film itself, it’s executed perfectly. Two moments, in particular, were quite possibly the best of the year. One of which involves a grapefruit. Almost died when that scene happened.

This does have a few times where the laughs didn’t come through for me as either they were predictable or was written a little poorly.

But I love the element of friendship being portrayed in here. This takes the story of friends who don’t see each other for a while and get together again and put it in perspective. You can honestly see that dynamite chemistry blossom entirely through their roles from the beginning to end. It doesn’t feel forced, but when it tends to happen, you just want everybody to be happy with each other.

By the end of it all, this is one of the best comedies to come out that anybody can pretty much enjoy and have fun with. Clearly isn’t for everyone especially if it’s not for its target audience. It has great chemistry between the women, some of the funniest laughs of the year, and has a formulaic story but it’s well-done in the end. If a sequel gets announced, that’s an idea I wouldn’t hate really. Let’s make that happen. Just to think that I was gonna wait till it comes out on Blu-ray to watch this. But the word of mouth actually came to me, and I’m glad it’s worth the watch.

Safe to say this is this year’s Bridesmaids.

Girls Trip is a satisfying raunchy R-rated summer comedy energized with hysterical laughs and its talented female leads.

Grade: B+