Girls Trip [Blu-Ray]

Director: Malcolm D. Lee

Cast: Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith

Release Date: October 17, 2017

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Film Rating: 7.5/10
Disc Rating: 8/10

Synopsis:

When four lifelong friends (Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah) travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival, sisterhoods are rekindled, wild sides are rediscovered, and there’s enough dancing, drinking, brawling and romancing to make the Big Easy blush.

Get ready for nonstop insanity and vulgar hilarity when four lifelong friends take on the Big Easy in ‘Girls Trip’. After far too many years without spending time together, longtime friends Ryan (Hall), Sasha (Latifah), Lisa (Pinkett Smith) and Dina (Haddish) all finally gather once again and head to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival. Once these four unique women get together and take on one of the biggest party towns in existence with a few drinks in them, things quickly get over the top crazy, vulgar and hilarious as they soon fall back into their old unapologetic and trouble causing patterns which continually get out of hand in this unforgettable trip filled with fun, sisterhood and some painful issues that aren’t likely to stay buried for long.

Directed by Malcolm D. Lee (Barbershop: The Next Cut, Undercover Brother) from a screenplay by Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver (Barbershop: The Next Cut), Lee does a fantastic job at the helm of ‘Girls Trip’ guiding this raunchy, hilarious and somewhat heartwarming tale along each wild turn. The film also owes a good share of the credit to the perfectly selected cast which includes Regina Hall (Scary Movie), Tiffany Haddish (TV’s The Carmichael Show), Jada Pinkett Smith (Bad Moms), Queen Latifah (TV’s Star), Larenz Tate (A Man Apart), Mike Colter (TV’s Luke Cage) and Kate Walsh (TV’s 13 Reasons Why) along with more, nearly all delivering highly competent performances in each of their respective roles.

‘Girls Trip’ is a surprisingly fantastic comedy for the most part that delivers no shortage of hilarious moments and raunchy unapologetic fun. Embracing the infamous guys’ trip concept and showing that a group of women can get just as downright nuts, especially once surrounded by lifelong friends and with the booze continuously flowing. It also tackles some more serious issues with care and respect and allows them to become a fairly important part of the story as we learn more about the individual struggles each is currently dealing with, and still doing its best to try and keep things somewhat light the majority of the time. It does suffer from at least a few issues, such as its tendency to drag in a few scenes, along with a few jokes that come off as more silly than truly funny. And while its tackling of some important issues is certainly to be commended, there are a few points where the drama and painful issues the characters are confronted with overwhelms the comedy and feels mildly out of place. Fortunately the many positive elements largely outweigh the negative, or at least allow it to be somewhat forgivable. It’s smoothly guided along each offensive and humorous turn by director Malcolm D. Lee whose capable guidance is greatly complimented by a solid cast featuring Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah who are each pretty spot-on in their portrayals of our four key leads. Anyone that tends to appreciate similarly vulgar and offensive comedy films that also have some real heart and something to say will almost surely want to make a point of giving ‘Girls Trip’ a shot when you have the opportunity to do so. It may drag a tad on occasion, but overall it’s a fun and quite hilarious ride that’s likely to prove well worth your time if you’re already even the slightest bit intrigued.

Overall, ‘Girls Trip’ is a smart, hilarious and enjoyable ride that takes the most generic of concepts and switches a few things up in addition to allowing itself to become something far more than merely a pointless comedy as it tackles some serious and somewhat painful issues amidst the consistent vulgar hilarity. Director Malcolm D. Lee does a wonderful job guiding the story along and the well selected, talented cast really helps to make it work as splendidly as it does. It occasionally drags and becomes a bit less humorous when some of the more important matters come into focus, but as a whole it’s a solid comedy that rarely disappoints. It may not be for everyone, but I would definitely recommend ‘Girls Trip’ to those that appreciate a raunchy and offensive comedy that rarely falters and also dares to tackle some important issues, along with anyone that may be a fan of any or all of the key cast members. Chances are it won’t have any trouble proving itself worthy of both your time and the cost of a rental if you’re already at all interested in the movie to begin with.

VIDEO:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Girls Trip’ features a full 1080p High Definition presentation utilizing the film’s original 2.40:1 Cinemascope Aspect Ratio. The video presentation looks great as a whole and delivers a consistently sharp, detailed and clean presentation throughout with no notable faults to be uncovered along the way. It holds up quite well even during the darkly lit and heavily populated sequences and never causes anything occurring on screen to become negatively affected or rendered indiscernible. Overall, this is a solid high definition video presentation from Universal that should easily thrill fans of the movie.

AUDIO:

The Blu-ray release features a lossless 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. This lossless multichannel soundtrack offers a perfect complement to the film with its crisp, clean and fairly aggressive audio presentation. It regularly takes advantage of all five available channels in order to send plenty of music, crowd chatter, bits of dialogue and more throughout the various speakers, and never allowing any dialogue or other audio elements that may be occurring simultaneously to become distorted or rendered inaudible in the process. Overall, this is a wonderful 5.1 channel DTS-HD MA soundtrack that contributes some additional fun to the overall viewing experience and shouldn’t disappoint.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Girls Trip’ includes some humorous and enjoyable extras that fans of the movie should have plenty of fun with. Included on the release is an ‘Audio Commentary with Director Malcolm D. Lee’, in addition to a collection of ‘Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by Director Malcolm D. Lee’ (running approximately 10 minutes in length altogether) and a massive set of ‘Outtakes’ (running approximately 25 minutes). We are also treated to a few Behind the Scenes Featurettes including interviews/comments with the cast and crew, behind the scenes footage and more: ‘Planning the Trip’ (approximately 10 minutes), ‘Outrageous Moments’ (6 minutes) and ‘The Essence of Nola’ (6 minutes). An ‘Extended Performance of “Because of You” by Ne-Yo’ (3 minutes) is also included.

*Please note that the above images are taken from the Blu-Ray and resized. They additionally will suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this Blu-Ray release are the property of their respective owners.

Film Rating: 7.5/10
Disc Rating: 8/10

‘Girls Trip’ is Now Available to Own on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital HD from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

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