USA Today – September 5th 2012 [1]

‘Bachelorette’ is the life of the female comedy party

Kirsten Dunst knows there is an audience eager to see movies like her new R-rated comedy Bachelorette. She’s just not so good at articulating it.

“People love seeing women acting crazy, looking sexy,” Dunst says, before stammering “and saying lu…lu…”

“Lurid things,” her co-star Isla Fisher adds.

“Yes, lurid things,” Dunst says. “Wait, actually, lewd. Lewd things. That’s what I was trying to say.”

In ‘Bachelorette,’ three bridesmaids party too hard the night before their friend’s wedding.

Lurid. Lewd. Raunchy. Choose any of those terms to describe the spate of female-centric comedies hitting theaters.

Besides Bachelorette (opening Friday), there’s the phone-sex comedy For a Good Time, Call, which continues to expand its theater run this weekend. And on Oct. 19, True Blood’s Carrie Preston unveils her R-rated That’s What She Said, which features Anne Heche, sexually explicit dialogue and multiple barf scenes.

Last year, Bridesmaids earned $169 million, proving that moviegoers would pay to see women in gross-out comedies. The new crop has considerably smaller budgets, but the subject matter is even more out there.

Bachelorette features a trio of friends (Dunst, Fisher and Lizzy Caplan) returning home for a friend’s wedding. In one madcap evening they deal with cocaine and alcohol, strip clubs, bulimia and revelations of an abortion.

“We’re not sugarcoating anything,” says Fisher.

Bachelorette writer-director Leslye Headland says it took her years of shopping her hit off-Broadway play before she was able to make it into a film. “People would say flat out that R-rated female comedies don’t make money. When Bridesmaids opened, all of these people were proven wrong.”

For a Good Time, Call, starring co-screenwriter Lauren Miller, keeps pace with sex toys and talk, as well as crude cameos (including Miller’s husband, Seth Rogen).

“People always say there’s weird things in the water in Los Angeles,” says Miller. “I guess this time it’s female comedies. There’s always been a desire to see these films. There just hasn’t been the product.”