I want to know how much Essence paid for this. The pillow neatly propped up so that he logo is always facing camera, the outright commercial testimonial descriptions, the overt celebration of the festival as a celebration of blackness emphasizing that this is all brand-friendly messaging, it's a blatant two-hour commercial. There's a lot of films where this would feel insulting, but honestly, I don't know that this wasn't a well crafted pairing. This feelgood, simple message of women's empowerment--black women especially--isn't counter to anything the festival is trying to sell here. Whether Essence Fest is actually anything like what is portrayed here, I can't say for sure (never really had the money to go, and I regret more than…

If you've seen any gross-out, party comedy movie, you've already seen Girls Trip. The difference in my experiences with some of those is that they tend to actually be funny. Maybe I'm just worn out on that type of comedy, but there's so little of anything to hold on to here in this 2 hour screech fest that will have me remembering it in the next hour.

Girls Trip follows four lifelong college friends uniting once again for a night out on the town. They're much older, but they can party just as hard as before. "Hilarity" ensues.

For a movie with a sole purpose of creating laughs from the audience, Girls Trip surprisingly tries hard at building a story…

Pretty fun when things get wild, but horribly plotted and silly in its writing when its not going full insanity. The dialogue between the four leads was almost always awkwardly stilted and each character is basically just one strict idea that must be broken down by the film's end.

But man, Tiffany Haddish really does make this film worthwhile. She is the light in every single scene. Girls Trip has a lot of moments that could've been absolutely horrible, from a scene where the leads stop everything and pray together, to literally pissing on the heads of the people of New Orleans, yet Haddish makes all of these work far better than they should.

I also found the moral lesson…