Role of Paul Rudd’s bridesmaids explained

The Judd Apatow method of comedic filmmaking, where actors are encouraged to riff and/or repeat lines fed to them by the director, tends to lead to an embarrassment of riches in the editing room. What else would you expect when you’ve brought together so many remarkably funny people, many of whom cut their teeth in improv groups? These people have been trained to keep a scene “yes and” inventive, and in our age of digital cinema, they can literally be allowed to go crazy before moving on to the next setup.

There are downsides to this approach (sometimes you’d like to enjoy a clever, concisely written scene where you can’t see the actors’ improvisational gears turning), but the biggest problem for directors working within this high-tempo format is deciding what to cut. Knowing when and where to kill your darlings is what separates a comedy classic like “The 40 Year Old Virgin” from a brutally bloated drama like “This Is 40,” and while I rarely prefer the extended cuts of even his good movies I think Apatow does aspiring directors a service by showing what too much of a good thing looks like.

If you’re looking for a perfect case study of a beautiful darling judiciously murdered, look no further than the deleted scenes from Paul Feig’s “Bridesmaids.” Produced by Apatow and written by the genius duo of Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig (All Ave. “Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar”), the comedy about a single woman who becomes hilariously sunken in the run-up to her wedding best friend. It is loaded with setprosurioses parts. At a healthy 125 minutes, it’s impossible to know what to cut; You may be tempted to cut out some of the riffy scenes, but, as is not always the case in films like this, they advance the plot or provide crucial character development.

How good is “Bridesmaids”? It’s one of the best comedies of the 2010s despite Feig cutting its funniest scene.

When Feig started shooting “bridesmaids,” I sincerely doubt he looked at Mumolo and Wiig’s script and marked a blind date scene between Wiig and Paul Rudd as a moment destined for the cutting room floor. In retrospect, without knowing anything about the development of the script, you may see the film as constituted and wonder why they even bothered to film the sequence. Why would Wiig’s Annie jump into her already complicated love life by dating a complete stranger, especially when, from a narrative perspective, the audience has already identified Chris O’Dowd’s amiable Cop Nathan as the obvious Mr. Right?

It doesn’t make sense, and that’s why the scene is gone. But when Feig told Entertainment Weekly“It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever witnessed,” he wasn’t lying. As you can see on YouTubeThe date begins with Wiig and Rudd having dinner at a nice restaurant, where they hit it off. Rudd is a psychologist who treats people with hoarding tendencies, and he seems genuinely into his work. Wiig seems to like it and, because it’s Rudd, so do we. Then they go ice skating. While introducing themselves to each other, Rudd falls and gets the tip of his finger cut off by a child innocently doing laps around the arena. He immediately goes nuclear, accusing everyone of delighting in his pain. Finally, he profanely scolded the boy who hurt him, resulting in the boy’s father hitting him. This is not a masterfully constructed bally scene, but is screamingly funny.

And it’s right where it belongs: in a deleted scenes reel on the Blu-ray. And let’s hope the potential “bridesmaids” sequel stays where it belongs too: in Mumolo and Wiig’s smartphone notes.