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Girls Trip

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Tiffany Haddish, Regina Hall, Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith in Girls Trip. (AP)
Tiffany Haddish, Regina Hall, Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith in Girls Trip. (AP)

What it's about:

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.

What we thought:

Every few years there’s a raunchy comedy that gets everyone talking and rolling in the aisles - Girl’s Trip is that film for 2017. 

This movie made me flat-out-cackle, so much so that I grabbed my sides from chuckling a little too much, like someone winded from running.

What made the overall story even better (aside from the laughs) was that it puts four black women at the centre of a story that is refreshing in its sincerity, relatability and believability. Director Malcolm D. Lee doesn’t just give the audience levity to make the heavy moments stick more, like a sucker punch. Quite simply, this movie is just carefree happiness personified. 

But I wasn’t completely sold on it before I went to see it though, because there was hype about the R-Rated American blockbuster before its local press screening; something that usually makes me cautiously optimistic about a new release.  As it started I was a little bit put off by the opening scenes and was ready to be disappointed. But from the minute that Tiffany Haddish came on screen I started laughing and didn’t stop until the last moment.

Haddish plays Dina, who is the most carefree of the group of friends known as The Flossy Posse. She is a scene stealer and comic natural in the physical styling of Melissa McCartney in Bridesmaids or John Belushi in Animal House. She makes me want to see a sequel with her at the centre of it, just being the life of a party and the reason the four women go on their second girl’s trip.

The stand-up comedian is an excellent foil for Jada Pinkettt Smith’s straight laced Lisa, who is the most buttoned up of the four women.  Pinkett Smith does well in this role. Her character is a mother of two and hasn’t had any action between the sheets for years. A fact that becomes the motivation for some of the funniest scenes in the flick, which are definitely not for those who are uncomfortable with the talk of sex or bodily fluids (or the sight of them). 

Queen Latifah plays Sasha who went to university with the other three women and decided to be a journalist but her career hasn’t panned out the way she wanted when we meet her before the girl’s trip. Latifah is the catalyst behind some of the more earnest friendship-driven parts of the film and has fantastic chemistry with Regina Hall’s character of Ryan, who is the main protagonist of the four leads.

Hall’s Ryan is the thread that ties everyone there and her character has the most development. She carries that role well and it’s tough to see the young woman who once made a splash in the Wayans brothers’ spoof-horror Scary Movie. 

In the scenes where the leads were all together, it felt like Destiny’s Child reuniting for the Superbowl or when Beyoncé drops an Instagram - it gave me goosebumps and made me want to scream affirmations. 

I totally get why some people might not enjoy Girl’s Trip. It’ll be too much for some people, the same people who didn’t like Bridemaids or There's Something about Mary. The same people who ‘don’t really enjoy comedies’ or laughing and that’s cool. To each their own, however I feel that watching this movie is great choice. 



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