2017 is another year where we have two movies that look to be almost the same. This year It’s Rough Night and Girls Trip and really other than women going on a trip they are completely different movies in plot and theme. Girls Night feels more like Bridesmaids in tone than Rough Night’s take on Very Bad Things. Girls Trip is about Ryan (Regina Hall) who seems to have the perfect life with the perfect marriage to her husband, retired football player, Stewart (Mike Colter). She's essentially the second coming of Oprah but she misses her best friends from her college days at FAMU – Sasha (Queen Latifah), Lisa (Jada Pinkett-Smith), and Dina (Tiffany Haddish). So when she’s asked to be the keynote speaker at Essence Festival in New Orleans she decides to contact her friends and to do a girls trip like they used to do in the past. From there hijinks ensue over the weekend in New Orleans and much drama as well.
Regina Hall does a great job with Ryan – she pulls off the attitude of I got it all together and am able to deal with any problem, while still being her usual charismatic and down to earth/girl next door role that she’s excelled at for a long time now. Queen Latifah does well as the strong willed Sasha who is the only person on screen that is seen and handled as her equal in the whole story. The two are able to really bring about a level of comfort to their roles as long standing friends that have unresolved issues between them. Jada’s Lisa really has some great laughs and the most dynamic change within the movie as a former party girl that now an overly cautious and rigid mother. The real comedic MVP in this film is Tiffany Haddish, mostly known from the hilarious Carmichael Show on NBC, here she plays a similar role with even more freedom and the ability to curse. Just about every single big laugh from this film includes her and her performance, from her vocal inflections to her facial expression, she is able to bring a laugh out of the audience.
It’s pretty cool to see a comedy starring black women getting to do all the raunchy, fun humor that usually we see white men do all the time, occasionally black men and that one time we saw white women. Hopefully, this does well and we can see more of these type of movies that are universal yet also celebrate another part of American culture like this one does. This movie really isn’t perfect but it’s really, really good. It’s enjoyable and if you have the chance to see it in an audience full of black women you might not have a more enjoyable experience in the theater this year. Girls Trip is very much worth the trip.
Rating: 4 Out of 5 Guttenbergs
