MOVIE REVIEW: Girls Trip

Chick Flick Comedy starring Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall, and Tiffany Haddish.Â Four long time friends who have not seen each other in five years come together for a weekend in New Orleans.Â One is an unlucky in love Nurse, the other a oversexed crazy person, another a Celebrity blogger, and the last is a Self Help Guru trying to seal a deal that will set her and her cheating husband up for life.Â What could go wrong?

Well folks this is my last movie before I head into the wild with the books for London Film and Comic Con.Â I really wish that this film was tomorrow as then I would have missed it.Â I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, it’s a funny film, but it could have been so much better if they had the nerve to cut about 30 to 40 minutes.Â In a two-hour film that is a big chunk but it needs it.

The problem if you think about it is like this, there are enough jokes and great set ups for comedy that a 90 minute film would have had me bouncing around the aisles laughing my socks off.Â Today being the one day a year I wore socks.Â But the film dilutes down when you add that 30 to 40 minutes of extra film that it doesn’t need.Â There are parts of the film that feel like the main cast were actually on a weekend away and were just having fun and they filmed it.Â Other parts feel like a travel show for New Orleans.Â The concert segment of the show is so staged and false that it just hurts the story of the film that they are trying to tell.Â When it comes to the pacing of the film it really disrupts your enjoyment.

The comedy is good when it happens but you feel lost a sea, with only a few small islands along the journey.Â There was a deeper story just waiting to explode but it was more important to show Puff Daddy or whatever he’s called in concert.Â

The saving grace of the film is Tiffany Haddish, who plays the almost psychopathic Dina, not only are the best lines saved for her it’s also a manic performance that just lifts the dreary parts of the film up so that you are waiting for her next explosion.Â Jada, Queen, and Regina, are all fine but their roles are more dramatic.Â Mike Colter, Luke Cage, plays Regina’s cheating husband who is able to convince her that his cheating is behind him time and time again, it gets annoying that this plot point comes up every once in a while, when Regina is painted as an intelligent woman.Â When Haddish goes off on him it’s one of the best parts of the film.

Girls Trip could have been the punchy summer comedy that I wanted but instead of that we get a lot of film that is needless to the story.Â The fight scenes and the golden shower scene are highlights and everything that works is needed, they placed a lot of footage in there that is not needed though, and it hurts the film.Â If they took the film back to the editing suite and purged it of the extra pieces that don’t serve the story I’d up my mark on this film, I’d probably double it.Â I can’t imagine watching this again but that in itself bothers me as Tiffany Haddish is an amazing performer whom I cannot wait to experience in something better paced than this.

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