Girls Trip
I mentioned Girls Trip as a pro-single film in my book, How to be a Happy Bachelor, but I include it here because its overall message is: friendship can run deeper than romance.
Regina Hall (single in real life) stars as Ryan Pierce, a famous self-help guru who inspires women they can “have it all” and on the surface, her life looks idyllic: a best-selling book, fame, money, a hunky ex-pro football player, husband, Stewart. But as the film goes on, we begin to see beneath the image.
She and her girlfriends, Lisa, Dina, and Sasha, known as the Flossy Posse back in their wild college days, convene in New Orleans, where Ryan is the keynote speaker at the famed Essence Festival, and she uses this as a reason to get the crew back together. The trailer for this film is quite misleading, as it mostly shows the girls engaged in Hangover-like antics, including a scene involving urine, which was, I thought, the low point of the movie.
The friendship between these women was the selling point for me. They serve as the catalyst for Ryan to learn the truth about herself and the image she’s crafted. Sasha, a celebrity blogger, has received a photo showing Stewart canoodling with Simone, an Instagram star. As they learn, it goes beyond canoodling, and her friends question whether Ryan should really be with Stewart for the sake of her brand (that’s why she puts up with his cheating).
SPOILER ALERT: At the end of the film, Ryan exposes Stewart for the liar that he is, and she has a line that stuck with me: “Many people stay in bad relationships because they feel being disrespected is better than being alone, but we shouldn’t fear being alone.” There’s a subplot about Ryan and Stewart being considered to be spokespeople for a big retail chain, but Ryan’s fear is she’ll lose out on the opportunity without Stewart. As it turns out, the chain’s advertiser informs her that “single women are a big market,” and she invites Ryan, and only Ryan, to be the representative.
Ryan responds by asking Sasha to partner with her (she had ditched her on a project years earlier to create a brand with Stewart). Ryan does start a new romance with another old college friend, but that’s a tiny part of it. So another subtext: friendship can mean more than romance.
This might not happen in real life, but I’ll take it.
Regina Hall (single in real life) stars as Ryan Pierce, a famous self-help guru who inspires women they can “have it all” and on the surface, her life looks idyllic: a best-selling book, fame, money, a hunky ex-pro football player, husband, Stewart. But as the film goes on, we begin to see beneath the image.
She and her girlfriends, Lisa, Dina, and Sasha, known as the Flossy Posse back in their wild college days, convene in New Orleans, where Ryan is the keynote speaker at the famed Essence Festival, and she uses this as a reason to get the crew back together. The trailer for this film is quite misleading, as it mostly shows the girls engaged in Hangover-like antics, including a scene involving urine, which was, I thought, the low point of the movie.
The friendship between these women was the selling point for me. They serve as the catalyst for Ryan to learn the truth about herself and the image she’s crafted. Sasha, a celebrity blogger, has received a photo showing Stewart canoodling with Simone, an Instagram star. As they learn, it goes beyond canoodling, and her friends question whether Ryan should really be with Stewart for the sake of her brand (that’s why she puts up with his cheating).
SPOILER ALERT: At the end of the film, Ryan exposes Stewart for the liar that he is, and she has a line that stuck with me: “Many people stay in bad relationships because they feel being disrespected is better than being alone, but we shouldn’t fear being alone.” There’s a subplot about Ryan and Stewart being considered to be spokespeople for a big retail chain, but Ryan’s fear is she’ll lose out on the opportunity without Stewart. As it turns out, the chain’s advertiser informs her that “single women are a big market,” and she invites Ryan, and only Ryan, to be the representative.
Ryan responds by asking Sasha to partner with her (she had ditched her on a project years earlier to create a brand with Stewart). Ryan does start a new romance with another old college friend, but that’s a tiny part of it. So another subtext: friendship can mean more than romance.
This might not happen in real life, but I’ll take it.
