There is a real temptation with a film such as Bridesmaids to shout “girl power” from the rooftops. To talk about how it’s so great that after years of comedies with men in the driver’s seat, women are finally getting the last laugh. About how it’s proof that women really can be funny too. The truth is, women have always been funny but rarely have we seen them take the lead in that hallmark of blokey genre flicks: the gross-out comedy.

Bridesmaids sees Saturday Night Live’s Kristen Wiig as Annie; unlucky in love, work, life and just about every other facet of existence you could possibly think of. She’s sleeping with (and perhaps a little bit in love with) a chauvinistic ladies man who treats her like crap (a deliciously douchey Don Draper… erm I mean Jon Hamm), her cupcake business was a casualty of the financial crisis, she can’t pay her rent and her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) has just announced that she is leaving the world of the single ladies and getting hitched and wants Annie as maid of honour. But also on the bridal party is the rich, glamorous and perfectly coiffed Helen (Rose Byrne), who will stop at nothing to be the perfect bridesmaid, even if it means tripping Annie up the aisle. Cue an increasingly hilarious set of shenanigans and games of one-upmanship that spiral very quickly out of control.

Bridesmaids is a film that lets it all hang out. All of that “secret women’s business” is thrust into centre stage. Yes we can be bitchy, yes we can be neurotic, yes we vomit, yes we burp, yes we fart and yes, it is actually impossible to come up looking, or smelling, like roses when you’ve been brutally felled by a nasty bout of food poisoning. But don’t be fooled; the “gross out” part of this flick doesn’t overwhelm the narrative. Director Paul Fieg (with definite undertones from producer Judd Apatow) makes sure the balance between comedy, romance and crassness is delicately balanced (if you can describe transitioning from a wedding dress fitting to a spew-fest as ‘delicate’). There’s enough sugar coating that the disgusting bits never seem to cross the line and enough laughs that the romance is never treacle-sweet.

Wiig (who also co-wrote the film with her friend Annie Momolo) is perfect as the hapless Annie. She isn’t afraid to put everything on the line for a gag and doesn’t care if she looks like crap doing it. Byrne was similarly fabulous as Helen. There are some ridiculously funny scenes between these two (including a never-ending toast to the newly engaged couple featuring what I’m told were many improvised moments) that will have you crying with laughter. Chris O’Dowd plays awkward bumbling cop Rhodes, Annie’s potential love interest, with the kind of awkward Irish flair that fans of The IT Crowd have come to know and love. Wendi McLendon-Covey, Melissa McCarthy and Ellie Kemper round off the Bridesmaids and each brings something different in the funny stakes. The only criticism I really had was that the storylines of McLendon-Covey and Kemper just seemed to peter out midway through the movie. They were there, and then they sort of weren’t. They were still visible they just had nothing left to say, which seemed kind of odd. But it’s a very small gripe in what was a very enjoyable film.

And finally, to test the assertions that Bridesmaids was a chick flick guys would love, I made sure I took a male companion for a second opinion. After admitting the romance scenes that were making all the women in the audience coo didn’t really do much for him, my plus-one says he enjoyed it quite a bit. And that, in my book, is the real win for women-kind; a romantic, wedding-themed chick flick you can take a guy to, that won’t make him want to claw his eyes out with the spoon of his frozen coke straw.