A few days ago I was walking through a bookstore with a female friend of mine. Like myself she is an avid reader and spent some time perusing the shelves in the fiction, fantasy and science fiction sections. She even took a quick gander at the erotic section to see if humour-erotica had been invented yet (it hasn’t). The only section she wouldn’t give any time to was what she referred to as chick-lit. This got me thinking about women as a target audience. It seems like everything marketed towards women has Sandra Bullock or Nicholas Sparks attached. Wouldn’t it be great if a movie came out that was for women but didn’t cater to the rom-com mold?

That vacancy in the marketplace is where the new movie BRIDESMAIDS fits in. It’s being billed as THE HANGOVER with women, but I saw it as the x chromosomal answer to KNOCKED UP, instead. Where THE HANGOVER was filled with unexpected occurrences and mystery KNOCKED UP was about friendship, relationships and how people relate and deal with those around them. This is the realm in which BRIDESMAIDS shines. The characters are all women (save turns by Jon Hamm and Chris O’Dowd as the Bellamy and the gentleman) and the conversations that occur are what film has been missing.

The male-oriented comedy is filled with talk of sex and women and yet female-oriented movies are so often filled with talk of love and relationships. BRIDESMAIDS takes the former route and hits it out of the park. Writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo take a stereotypical female moment (a wedding) and turn the expected on its head. They give us riffs on marriage, relationships, children and oral sex from the female point of view like we’ve never heard before.

The cast is strong, led by co-writer Kristen Wiig who is sure to join Tina Fey as a strong female presence in the writer-actor world. The story, though a little run of the mill, manages to hit the right notes and keeps things focused on the characters rather than events. The director, Paul Feig (an Apatow veteran) never loses the heart of the story. Sure, it’s vulgar and crass at times, but there’s nothing wrong with that if the characters deal with it in a realistic way.

Many moments in this film are about character reactions to what has just happened. Make that female character’s reactions. BRAIDESMAIDS fills a void for a target audience that has been woefully neglected.