Bridesmaids

If Bridesmaids achieves nothing else, it at least gives the divine Kristen Wiig the chance to stretch her comedy muscles, bat her comedy eyelashes and swing her comedy helicopter legs about in a lead role at long last. It also gives me an excuse to post this photo of her in knee-high socks and roller boots from Whip It:

She was Brahbrah in that episode of Flight Of The Conchords too, did you realise that? I didn't.

Fantasy women aside, Bridesmaids will in fact achieve plenty. It's a chick flick that doesn't just appeal to chicks and doesn't assume its audience is full of dribbling idiots, and it pretty much guarantees LOLs and possibly small incidents of eye-moisture in even the most granite-hearted bastards out there.Yes, I'm talking about you, me.

It's not massively original, it's fairly predictable and there's the odd stereotype in there

but where Bridesmaids differs from the usual humdrum romcom bumcrumbs is in its script, co-written by Wiig. It's funny without resorting to gross-out crudity (much - there is a hilarious puke or two), it's touching in all the right places and there's only one montage, which displays remarkable and welcome restraint. Sadly the conclusions of a couple of the bridesmaids' story arcs appear to have been left on a shelf somewhere; maybe we'll find out what happens to them in Bridesmaids 2, when they go to Thailand and all turn into horrible bitches.

The cast are uniformly excellent, with Chris O'Dowd and Jon Hamm holding their own against the ladies (fnerk), and polymath Paul Feig (he created, directed and produced several US TV series and has been acting since the '80s) directs with confidence, avoiding the easy path of churning out an XX-chromosome version of another popular pre-wedding misadventure film currently abusing cinema audiences.

Even so, Bridesmaids is bound to be labelled by some as The Hangover Part II with women, but that would be reductive. It's much better than that: it's The Hangover Part II without the bollocks.