Girls Trip | Film review - Bold, brassy and outrageously rude

Girls Trip Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tiffany Haddish Regina Hall — (Image credit: © 2017 Universal Studios. All)

You'll be glad you came.

Making a bold and brassy bid to be the African-American Bridesmaids, the unrelentingly raunchy comedy Girls Trip dispatches lifelong friends Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith and Tiffany Haddish on a trip to the Essence Festival in New Orleans.

Whether you laugh uproariously at the women’s drunken and lusty antics, or shudder and cringe in dismay, will be very much a matter of taste. Amid all the bodily fluid gags is a resolutely upbeat celebration of empowerment and sisterhood, and the irrepressibly exuberant, scene-stealing Haddish is clearly a breakout star, the film’s equivalent of Bridesmaids’ Melissa McCarthy.

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All the same, strip away the crassness and vulgarity (brace yourselves for scenes involving public urination and grapefruit-assisted sex acts) and subtract the stars’ chemistry, and the film’s conventional plot and shallow script start to look pretty feeble.

Certificate 15. Runtime 122 mins. Director Malcolm D Lee

Girls Trip available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from Universal Pictures.

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A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.