'SNL' star lights up screen in 'Bridesmaids'

Judd Apatow comedies might be infamous for their gross-out humor involving vile bodily fluids, but they still connect with us because of the utter humanness of their characters, poor souls caught up in their outrageous plots.

“Bridesmaids” — an Apatow production directed by Paul Feig — produces frequent waves of hilarious vulgarity as it tells a sweet, endearing story about a woman suffering through a pre-mid-life crisis.

Annie, played by “Saturday Night Live” star Kristen Wiig, hears both her biological and chronological clocks ticking even louder when her lifelong best friend Lillian (“SNL” star Maya Rudolph) announces she's getting married.

Annie's cupcake business went bust during the economic collapse, and she now lives with her irritatingly supportive mother (the late Jill Clayburgh in her final screen appearance).

Annie's romantic life has gone bust, too. She's been reduced to casual encounters with a married sleaze (“Mad Men” star Jon Hamm) who treats Annie with all the affection of an office visitor.

Annie feels happy for Lillian, but realizes that now she'll be alone. Really alone.

It doesn't help that Lillian is marrying into a much higher tax bracket with Dougie (Tim Heidecker), and that a member of his social circle, Helen (Rose Byrne), decides that she should be Lillian's new best friend and maid of honor.

While at a posh bridal shower, Annie and Helen wrestle a microphone from each other to profess their friendship and commitment to Lillian with increasingly outrageous comments.

Annie is clearly outgunned and underequipped to handle Helen in hand-to-mic combat, resulting in a hilariously funny skirmish, laced with the sobering realization that Annie is desperately, hopelessly fighting not only for Lillian's friendship, but for her very social existence.

In short, it's the heart that matters in “Bridesmaids” (written by Wiig and Annie Mumolo). But visceral jokes are to be had as well.

The organically integrated sequence where the bridesmaids fall victim to food poisoning while trying on $10,000 dresses ranks as one of the grossest accomplishments in humor at least since the last Apatow production.

As the bridesmaids, TV's “Mike & Molly” star Melissa McCarthy bravely puts herself front and center as the oversexed, overweight Megan, “The Office” star Ellie Kemper plays the doe-eyed Becca, and Wendi McLendon-Covey gives Rita, the unfulfilled mother of three, an acerbically comical edge.

“Bridesmaids” is partly an ensemble comedy about the five women selected to stand up with Lillian, but, mostly, this comedy is all about Wiig, who's a serio-comic revelation here in a breakthrough role.

Gone are the ticks, tricks and overplayed neuroses that Wiig has skillfully employed in her quirky characters (her Penelope leads the list) in some of the best “SNL” skits of recent TV seasons.

Wiig's Annie comes off as just a normal woman beset by feelings of insecurity and the encroaching fear that she's missing life's boat.

Still, Wiig communicates the unspoken declaration that her Annie deserves better, even if it is an unassuming local state trooper called Officer Rhodes (Chris O'Dowd) with an inexplicable Irish accent.

Theirs is no spectacular Hollywood romance, just a low-key series of meetings that gradually allow mutual attractions to grow into something special.

As for the flash-edited sequence where Annie drives by Officer Rhodes committing various misdemeanors just so he'll arrest her: comic gold.

<b>“Bridesmaids”</b>

★ ★ ★

<b>Starring: </b>Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Chris O'Dowd, Melissa McCarthy, Jon Hamm

<b>Directed by: </b>Paul Feig

<b>Other:</b> A Universal Pictures release. Rated R for language, gross humor, sexual situations. 125 minutes.