'Bridesmaids' star Melissa McCarthy is on a roll

Melissa McCarthy's commitment to her character Megan in Bridesmaids, who dresses and acts like a hyper-masculine gym teacher, was so absolute I was shocked to see her with styled hair and a full face of makeup in "Mike and Molly" and on the red carpet. McCarthy has long been a working actor in Hollywood, but since the success of Bridesmaids she's gotten three projects off the ground.

First, she will star in Tammy, a project she co-wrote with her husband Ben Falcone (who played the air marshal her character comes on to in Bridesmaids). She will play a woman who loses her job at Hardee's and finds out her husband has been cheating on her. Ready to escape her daily life, she goes on a road trip with her foul-mouthed, eccentric grandma. Veteran TV director Beth McCarthy-Miller (not related to Melissa) will direct the New Line project, which is in pre-production. I've seen plenty of road trip comedies, but none with this casting.

Today, two more McCarthy projects were announced. The first is more Falcone's project, but she will serve as co-executive producer of a comedy TV pilot that centers on a 37-year-old living at home with his parents.

The other project, Identity Theft, will star McCarthy as a woman who steals the identity of a man (Jason Bateman). Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses) just signed on to direct, and word is production will start in early 2012.

I'm impressed that McCarthy has been able to not only sell her own projects, but actually be cast in an existing screenplay. Perhaps the role in Identity Theft was originally written for a man? Or the joke was that the thief looks nothing like the person in the ID but somehow she's still able to pass for the guy? Everyone in Bridesmaids was funny, but McCarthy took the most risks. Hollywood gives Oscars to actors that make themselves look ugly for roles, and McCarthy did the same thing for comedy and it's made her career take off. With so many successful female-driven projects in the mix right now, I'm happy that McCarthy is among them.

Promising 'Bridesmaids' shows Apatow-style comedy can work for females

By Sarah Sluis

Another female-led movie about weddings? Oh dear. Though 27 Dresses had some redeeming moments, the horrible, ridiculous cat fighting that was Bride Wars (at least the trailer, I certainly wasn't going to see the movie after such an offensive preview) was enough to make me call it quits on the wedding genre. But Bridesmaids may be different.

Yesterday, the trailer for Bridesmaids hit the Internet. To sum up: This is a Judd Apatow-produced movie, and it shows. Kristen Wiig stars as a single gal whose best friend is getting married, giving her all the chores of a maid of honor. From the trailer, it seems like she's less unhappy about being single, and more unhappy about the fact that other people seem distressed about her relationship status (and the fact that they keep on mistaking the men standing next to her, however incompatible, as her beaux).

Unlike the vindictive hair dying and open fighting that was Bride Wars, Bridesmaids offers a more realistic take on how women bring each other down: Take the undermining comment about a fellow bridesmaid's outfit at a fancy party: "Did you come from work?" This is the kind of thing that "Sex and the City" was known for before it jumped the shark with SATC 2. The series succeeded because of its lightly caricatured, but hilarious, versions of people we already know (like snobby underminers).

Wigg kills it in Paul (trailer), a sci-fi comedy coming out in March, and I have similar faith in her in Bridesmaids. Wiig has more of a regular girl feel to her, much like fellow "SNL" alum Tina Fey. Wiig's co-stars include Maya Rudolph (also "SNL"), Ellie Kemper (the new secretary on "The Office"), Rose Byrne ("Damages") and Melissa McCarthy (starring in the "plus size" sitcom "Mike & Molly"). Notice something? None of these women have made careers as leading ladies, but in comedy and television, some in roles that prefer more down-to-earth looks.

I'm not expecting something on the level of The Hangover, and there were some stupid moments (e.g. a fart joke) that made it into the trailer. However, female buddy comedies are rare beasts, even as male-driven ones in the style of Judd Apatow have proliferated. As the spate of bad romantic comedies shows, Hollywood wants to create films that appeal to women, but it doesn't seem to know how. Bridesmaids has come up with one solution: Take the romance out of the comedy.