Does ‘Bridesmaids’ prove that women can be funny?

A new film being hailed as the female version of The Hangover is set to prove to the world that women can be funny, even if it means going down the well-trodden roads of banter normally reserved for men.
 
Bridesmaids has opened in America to almost universal approval and, with its UK release approaching, critics on both sides of the Atlantic are heaping praise on writer and star Kristin Wiig, known for her appearances on Saturday Night Live.
 
It's the story of an eclectic bunch of friends pulling together to give their best friend a hen trip to remember. With lashings of slapstick moments, filthy jokes and a heavy layer of female 'bromance' (should that be womance, or sistance?), Bridesmaids bears the hallmark of its producer, Hollywood comedy stalwart Judd Apatow.
 
Those tempted to dismiss it for its unoriginal premise are mistaken, it seems. Even Manohla Dargis of the New York Times has called the movie "unexpectedly funny", praising it for boldly going where no chick flick has gone before - "the gutter".

In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert said "it definitively proves that women are the equal of men in vulgarity, sexual frankness, lust, vulnerability, overdrinking and insecurity."

Wendy Ide in the London Times calls it "a riot of bad behaviour and brutal candour", adding: "It's irreverent, acutely observed and very funny".
 
Its harshest critic was only able to find fault in its lack of character development, calling it a "lewd, crude comedy", words that will hardly come as an insult to Wiig and Co.

But is the film's success – as  some critics have suggested – a kick in the teeth for Christopher Hitchens, who famously wrote an article for Vanity Fair four years ago titled ‘Why women aren't funny’?

Hitchens provoked ire and much criticism when he wrote that because women’s primary concern is reproduction, and they take it seriously, they are not amused by filthy humour.  "For women the question of funniness is essentially a secondary one," he said.
 
Germaine Greer has since weighed in on the subject, concluding that joke-telling is a form of bonding "intended to build fellowship rather than intimacy", and therefore predominantly used by men rather than women.

Either Hitchens and Greer were wrong – and women do joke around like the Hangover boys. Or perhaps that's just what it takes for women to be considered funny these days.

• Bridesmaids opens in Britain on June 24 ·