I yearn to see more funny movies by and about women. I write pointedly feminist comedy screenplays. My first spec was a girl version of Superbad. And I think that Bridesmaids was not very good.

I wanted it to be good. I saw it on opening night. I participated in the “everyone needs to go see Bridesmaids on opening night so that studios will greenlight more female-led comedies” hype. I’m glad it did well. But I was disappointed because it was not very good. My best friend (who is also a feminist and a comedy lover, with whom I saw The 40-Year-Old Virgin in theaters twice, and watched every episode of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, plus all the commentary tracks) agreed that it was not very good.

The actors are all very funny and talented and good at improvising and did a great job with what they were given. But the screenplay was not well written. I’ve read it, and it reads like what it is: a first attempt by two funny, talented sketch comedians with no understanding of screenplay structure.

Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo have readily acknowledged this fact in numerous interviews: “We didn’t know what we were doing. We bought Syd Field’s book, and then we were like, ‘OK, I think on page 30, our first act has to be over…?’” “Our only experience had been writing sketches, and sketches at the Groundlings are about six pages long. So in the very first draft, Kristen said, ‘OK, let’s think of it as 20 sketches, so we don’t get overwhelmed.’”

Had they taken the time to really learn how to structure a story, they might have written an Oscar-worthy screenplay. Instead, they wrote a first draft in six days, Judd Apatow threw in a poop scene for the dudes, and they punched it up with improvisation. The result was a decent vehicle for jokes with a flawed narrative, poorly developed character arcs, and an undercooked theme.