‘Girls Trip’ Trailer: Queen Latifah Gets Her Kicks, Cajun-Style

With The Best Man and its sequel The Best Man Holiday, director Malcolm D. Lee gave the audiences of America something regrettably uncommon: a film created and staffed by black talent, centered on the particulars of black life. They’re fun movies, and from the looks of the first trailer for Lee’s latest project Girls Trip, he’ll keep it light as he flips to the distaff side of the coin. At this point, giving moviegoers two hours of enjoyable respite from all this business [gestures broadly to entire world] practically qualifies as a public service.

Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall, and Tiffany Haddish play a quartet of ride-or-die gal pals who fear that the many adventures of life — marriage, children, being Queen Latifah — have begun to drive them apart. It’s been five years since their last real group hang, and so you know they’re gonna do it up right when they decide to have one final blowout before fully moving on to the world of adulthood. They book themselves a flight down to New Orleans for Essence Fest, the annual music festival/celebration of black culture and excellence, and of course hijinks follow them to the Big Easy. They break out the selfie-stick on Bourbon Street, take a trip to New Orleans’ local House of Blues (which is sort of like traveling to France so you can eat at McDonald’s, but they’re having fun, so whatever) and slink into one of the city’s many complexly aromatic strip clubs.

With the emphasis on black camaraderie and white-girl-wasted antics, the trailer conjures memories of 2014’s Think Like A Man Too, which plopped a gang of revelers down in Las Vegas for similar debauchery. That film was goofy and broad, but a good time nonetheless — moviegoers should expect more of the agreeable same.