Girls Trip

A famil­iar­i­ty with the viral video ​‘Angel Teach­ing Her Grape­fruit Tech­nique’ will enhance your appre­ci­a­tion of Mal­colm D Lee’s lat­est com­e­dy, Girls Trip. In it, Tiffany Haddish’s char­ac­ter help­ful­ly explains the method through which a woman may sim­u­late the sen­sa­tions of oral sex on her man using a warmed grape­fruit. Although recog­nis­ing this niche ref­er­ence brings its own sort of delight, the film glad­ly invites every­one to join in on the fun.

Weird­ly enough, that blowjob bit is pret­ty much Girls Trip in minia­ture: speci­fici­ty made uni­ver­sal through the gen­eros­i­ty of com­e­dy. Lee proud­ly cel­e­brates black women along with the bonds between them, and while he makes zero effort to pan­der or oth­er­wise nod to view­ers not meet­ing those two spec­i­fi­ca­tions, every­one can bask in the glow of this film’s radi­ant positivity.

The film rests on the quar­tet of besties who make up the core cast: there’s Regi­na Hall’s fun-lov­ing Ryan, who has the dream hus­band (Mike Colter) to com­plete her per­fect life; Queen Latifah’s jour­nal­ist turned celebri­ty gos­sip­mon­ger Sasha; Jada Pin­kett Smith’s but­toned-up Lisa, who hasn’t got­ten any D since her divorce two years ear­li­er; and Haddish’s Dina, a whirling hur­ri­cane of good times.

Their pil­grim­age down to New Orleans for Essence Fest has the same stakes as Mag­ic Mike XXL​’s grand migra­tion to Myr­tle Beach – will our heroes have fun?! – and like­wise ori­ents itself around the spec­ta­cle of plea­sure. There’s a bit of busi­ness about an Insta­gram ​“thot” mov­ing in on Ryan’s man and some long-sim­mer­ing ten­sions hit a boil near the end of the sec­ond act, as they must, but the focus remains firm­ly fixed on the uni­ver­sal joys of drinks, dudes, and dancing.

Even the weak­er com­ic set-pieces, such as one unfor­tu­nate inci­dent of pub­lic uri­na­tion while sus­pend­ed from a Bour­bon Street zip-line, come from a good-natured place. Most of the humour plays, and there’s no over­stat­ing just how good Had­dish is, but chief among this film’s virtues is its eager­ness to please. You want to love it as much as it loves you.