Review: Girls Trip
Tiffany Haddish. Remember the name. Best known for her work in Keanu and television's The Carmichael Show, Haddish is sure to break through big time with her unforgettable, sure to be star-making turn in Girls Trip, an absolutely uproarious comedy that not only maintains the laughs from the first second to the last, but also crafts a strong portrait of sisterhood.
As with this year's Rough Night, Girls Trip concerns a quartet of longtime friends known as the Flossy Posse who were once inseparable but whose paths have diverged over the years. There's Ryan Pierce (Regina Hall) who, with her successful career as a best-selling self-help author and media-perfect marriage to retired NFL player Stewart (Mike Colter), is poised to be the second coming of Oprah. Former journalist turned gossip blogger Sasha (Queen Latifah), meanwhile, is keeping up appearances despite the fact that she may lose her backer if she doesn't come up with some juicy scoops. Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith) has gone from party girl to nurse and over-nurturing mother of two, whilst Dina (Haddish) is the live wire of the group, aggressively sexual, fiercely protective, and extremely hilarious.
Since Regina is set to be a keynote speaker at the Essence Festival in New Orleans, she decides that would be the perfect opportunity to gather everyone together for a girls weekend and also to hopefully mend fences with Sasha with whom she had a falling out several years prior. Despite the tensions, it's abundantly clear that everyone is ride or die for one another. Though screenwriters Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver deliver one hilarious situation after another, they also nurture the film's emotional beats and craft relatable, multi-dimensional characters that are brought to even more life by the four leading ladies.
From Regina weathering blows to her perfect image to Lisa getting her freak on and her groove back, Girls Trip is a tribute not only to the strength of female friendship but also to the many different dimensions of being a woman. The film doesn't necessarily break any new ground but, unlike Rough Night or any of the recent spate of girls-behaving-badly comedies, Girls Trip breathes such energy into its oft-told tale that it reinvigorates the genre. It is also arguably as funny, if not even more so, than all recent films of that ilk combined. The baseline is laugh out loud, and there's a good chance one might crack a rib or three.
Of the multitude of jokes, visual and otherwise, the highlights have to be Dina's vigorous demonstration of "grapefruiting" and the golden showers that hit a Bourbon Street crowd, both of which may be the the most rib-crackingly funny things one will ever see in one's lifetime. Then there is Haddish, who just goes full-throttle in each scene and is the source for the film's most outrageous and vulgar jokes. She is an unstoppable ball of fire, and one can only hope that she gets more opportunities to display her impressive comic talents.
Girls Trip
Directed by: Malcolm D. Lee
Written by: Kenya Barris, Tracy Oliver
Starring: Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tiffany Haddish, Larenz Tate, Mike Colter, Kate Walsh
