My Thoughts On “Girls Trip” 

Group of friends known as the Flossy Posse back in college, have grown apart. Ryan (Regina Hall), now a famous author and personality is invited to be the keynote speaker at the Essence Festival in New Orleans. She accepts with the sole intention of getting the rest of the girls – Dina (the fantastic Tiffany Haddish) who is the life of the group and the wild child, Lisa (Jada Pinkett-Smith) the now reformed party girl, prudish mother of two and Sasha (Queen Latifah) a journalist turned blogger going through financial troubles.

The plot seems simple enough and how many movies have a plot similar to this? Fair enough. But when you add a great cast, good writing (Kenya Barris from Blackish leads the writing team) and characters with actual meat then you have what makes its simple story line stand out. Before going to see the movie, I had seen nothing but good reviews for this movie and I got a little wary. As I have mentioned before, there seems to be a fear by (white) critics to negatively review predominantly black movies so I wasn’t sure if it was actually good or if these were just PC reviews.

I was so glad that this movie lived up to its hype. There were many different story lines woven into this movie but it never felt convoluted or disjointed. And also there were laughs, oh so many laughs. Most of which were provided by Tiffany Haddish whose character pretty much allowed for her to take over the movie and run away with it. Which she did. Look out for her “grapefruiting” scene. All 4 women played their role right. I couldn’t stop staring at Jada Pinkett-Smith’s skin, it was just flawless. Quite unfortunate whoever styled Queen Latifah for the movie. She kept showing up in unfortunate jumpsuits that were not flattering on her. At some point, her belt was above her waist line and in some club scene, she looked like she was wearing hand me downs.

In spite of everything going on, I really liked how the movie focused on female friendships and how impactful and important it is to us as women. It had me reminiscing and thinking back to my closest friends who I met in college and all the things we’d experienced over the years since then. The supporting acts fulfilled their various roles. Mike Colter plays Ryan’s husband, Stewart and was as stiff as he always is. Larenz Tate plays Julian, the always there male friend , Kofi Siriboe as Malik is Lisa’s weekend fling and is basically eye candy for the movie. Kate Walsh is the white girl trying to be down as Ryan’s agent and who knew she had comedic chops (albeit little but they were there, I saw the bits)

Seeing as they filmed during an actual Essence Festival there were MANY cameos. I am not kidding – MANY cameos from singers  – Diddy, Mariah Carey, Ne-Yo, Maxwell to name a few.  Overall, I totally recommend this movie. It was such fun to watch. It’s rated R so it held nothing back. There’s foul language, butt cheeks and a penis to boot. At the end of the day, it’s a light hearted comedy that is top choice if you are looking for a 2 hour escape from the realities of the world or if you are just looking for a fun time with your friends (there was loud commentary in my showing).

P.S – For a movie with a heavy female target audience, I wondered what men who see this movie will think. If you are a guy who saw this movie, I’d love to know what you thought.