I rather like it when things are this juvenile. I guess it’s the first of his films where he’s not a credited writer (though undoubtedly he had some hand in it). Mann nudges it towards his own space by making everything a half point more extreme than it quite needed to be.
I guess I probably had the same arc with Ali that most probably did. The first half hour got me thinking that damn, I should retrospectively downgrade my opinion on Mann’s other work given that we see what he’s doing here.
It’s nice to see a studio comedy which is defined by its earnestness. Girls Trip engages full on with every moving cog part of its machinery. From the opening narration by a character who is unironically labelled the new Oprah, or perhaps the modern Oprah, it’s trying to be a film about connection. That old getting the band back together type deal. We’ve seen it in a lot of films recently, the old group of friends struggling to rebuild their connection over the unstable foundation of past slights, what sets Girls Trip apart is how much it cares.
