With Tiffany Haddish's performance in Girls Trip, a star is born. Think Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover. Think Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids. Think John Belushi in Animal House. That is the level of comedic immortality Haddish’s Dina achieves in this film. As raunchy as it wants to be — but leavened with sweetness and support — Girls Trip is an empowering and deeply funny film built out of joyful black women and a world that is content to let them do their thing. And Dina — sex positive, always ready with a champagne bottle or some hallucinogens, fiercely loyal and incapable of tolerating bullshit — embodies everything that makes this film memorable and special.
The girls who call themselves the Flossy Posse have been friends since the early ’90s. Ryan (Regina Hall, keeping things grounded and endearing), Sasha (Queen Latifah, who is a delight and also wins Best Supporting Performance by a Weave), Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith, who seems to be having the most fun satirizing her image but not to the point of addressing her actual death metal band) and Dina have been through it all together: college, marriage, divorces, kids, corporate success, the twists and turns of the modern internet-based economy, all of that. But after some rough patches and a divergent set of career paths, the quartet hasn’t spent proper time together in five years. Ryan’s burgeoning lifestyle empire enables her to bring the whole group together in New Orleans for the Essence Festival in hopes of getting the collective Flossy Posse groove back.
It’s staggering to think how many cinematic lessons there have been on how to escape from a mental institution where one is being wrongly held, or how to battle invading alien hordes. Or middle-management guys who lose their jobs and learn lessons while trying to keep their families together. Or even staid folks who become better people by drug-related mishaps thanks to being friendly. We get countless permutations of these formulae every year. Some will say Girls Trip is just another raunchy picaresque like so many others in the years since Hangover franchise proved that people never stopped liking filthy jokes.Â
But here’s the thing: Girls Trip is a delight, with relatable and likable characters who make compromised choices like all human beings do. It’s also a film where black women do the talking, and the learning, and the loving, and the hallucinating. And that’s deeply refreshing. This isn’t like Tyler Perry’s films, which are built on black women as icons of patient endurance but have a tendency to punish lust and free-thinking like Chick tracts. This is a film about the joys of open bars, quality dick, yes-and-ing whatever life brings your way, and the laid-back strength that charges the room when you’re among the friends who’ve known you long enough to know all the shit you’ve left behind but still remember.
As Ryan’s marriage comes apart from several angles throughout the New Orleans weekend, she and the girls reconnect with Julian (Larenz Tate), their old DJ friend who now plays bass for Ne-Yo. In the midst of the drugs and the drinking and the mayhem and the grapefruiting, there’s a beautiful, delicate romance unfolding like a series of Wong Kar-Wai vignettes. Director Malcolm D. Lee (who made the Best Man movies as well as the deeply underrated Undercover Brother) uses color masterfully, giving the spaces and clothes room to flourish with vibrancy and undeniable energy. Despite running two hours, Girls Trip never drags; there’s always a psychedelic blooming or dance fight right around the corner.
But any discussion of this movie begins and ends with Haddish as Dina. She is the id, the orgone crusader, the spiritual center of the group, and absolutely the friend you’d want to have your back. She is nasty sometimes, but she refuses to let anyone use shame against her. She is awesome, and when this film overperforms and trounces box-office expectations, just remember that unfiltered joy is something audiences totally dig. Girls Trip is smart, sweet, absolutely filthy and steadfastly comforting.
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