We haven’t hung in five years. I miss you guys. We need a girls trip. Let’s do this!
Girls Trip is a 2017 film starring Jada Pinkett-Smith, Queen Latifah, Tiffany Haddish, and Regina Hall.
Ryan Pierce (Regina Hall), a lifestyle guru dubbed "the next Oprah," invites her friends Sasha (the owner of a floundering gossip site, played by Queen Latifah), Lisa (an uptight single mother, played by Jada Pinkett-Smith), and Dina (a happy-go-lucky party animal, played by Tiffany Haddish) to New Orleans to attend the Essence Music Festival where Ryan will be a keynote speaker.
Along the way, they rekindle their wild side by drinking, dancing, romancing while also rekindling their friendship.
This film provides examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: Poor Malik is injured when Lisa attempts to "grapefruit" him. His screaming is Played for Laughs.
- Ass Shove: Dina hides her kush "where the sun don't shine" when boarding the airplane. She specifies that she means her booty, not her vagina. Lisa is worried she'll get an infection.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Dina, Sasha and Lisa all huddle together in a "corner" at the party to create a plan to tell Ryan about Stewart, it turns out they were standing right next to her.
- Berserk Button: Taking her food is a good way to get your ass kicked by Dina. Just ask her poor, unlucky former coworker.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Ryan publicly calls out her cheating husband while making her speech.
- When the girls go to a nightclub and run into Simone and her girls, it's actually Lisa, out of the whole group, that throws the first punch.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Stewart, Ryan's emotionally abusive husband who regularly cheats on her, and his equally horrible mistress Simone.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Malik. When Lisa finally gets to have sex with him, she steps out of the room, grabs a grapefruit, and goes to "grapefruit" him...only to come back for a second grapefruit.Lisa: Could you move your arm?Malik: [wearing a shit-eating grin] That's not my arm.
- Bitch Slap: Dina slaps Stewart hard for cheating on Ryan.
- Blatant Lies:
- Dina swears she's not going to start trouble with the homewrecker who slept with Ryan's husband, she's just going to talk politely; she's already removing her jewelry as she says it.
- During Ryan's speech, she still tries to keep the facade of a perfect marriage by claiming her marriage is going well. Her friends and the viewers all knew that it was a lie, so she finally drops the act.
- The Bore: Of the Flosse Posse, Lisa is considered as such by her friends, who playfully rib her for her uptightness and her choice of outfit for a night out.
- Butt-Monkey: Simone gets out through slapstick, such as getting force fed some sausage and attacked by the Flosse Posse. She deserves it, though.
- Breakout Character: Tiffany Haddish's performance as Dina is often cited in positive reviews of the movie.
- Casting Gag: Both Jada Pinkett-Smith and Queen Latifah appeared in the film Set It Off as two of the four friends who serves as the protagonists for that film.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Dina attacks her coworker (even going as far as to use a computer monitor) simply because he (accidentally) ate her yogurt.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Dina slaps Stewart because Stewart cheated on his wife, Ryan. While it's Played for Laughs due to how sleazy Stewart is and to sympathize with Ryan, nobody will laugh at a man for attacking a woman just because the woman cheated on her husband.
- Drugs Causing Slow-Motion: Dena buys some absinthe. The girls try some and experience a Mushroom Samba. We get to hear them giggle and chat in slowed, distorted voices.
- Establishing Character Moment: The first scene you see Dina in is when she physically attacks her co-worker and later gets fired for it...all while she ignores her boss completely, even saying that she'll see him after the trip.
- Everybody Must Get Stoned: This happened after Dina drugged the ladies' drinks with absinthe. Hijinks involving floating in mid-air, trying to have oral sex with an HDTV screen, dancing with a lamp and drinking the wax from a lit candle ensue.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Dina is choleric, Sasha is phlegmatic, Ryan is sanguine and Lisa is melancholic.
- Four-Man Band: The Flosse Posse is a Female example, and they each fit one particular role. Ryan is the Only Sane Woman and something of the leader being the most successful and level-headed of the girls, Sasha is the Smart Girl who's a journalist and the one who gives Ryan advice on how to deal with her situation with her cheating husband to help her avoid a scandal, Dina is a female example of the Casanova Wannabe because she is the most comedic, perverted and foul-mouthed member of the Flosse Posse as she openly states that she planned on getting wasted and to get some while in Essex, and Lisa is the Buttmonkey but while all her friends treat her kindly and respect her, she tends to also be the one they make fun of the most because of her somewhat uptight tendencies.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision: In the end Ryan had to choose between (1) continuing to live out a façade of her and Stewart being happily married and her having a perfect life, and (2) to take her friends’ advice of her leaving Stewart and not pretending to be okay. She chooses the latter. It ends up being a much better choice, as Ryan's agent tells Ryan that the deal with Best Mart is still on but with her alone.
- Gag Penis: Malik, Lisa’s lover in New Orleans, apparently has one. It's apparently so big that not only does Dina mistake it for his arm before she first sees it, she can fit two grapefruits over it.
- Girl's Night Out Episode: It’s in the title, but it's a movie. The Flosse Posse take a Girls Trip after not seeing each other in years.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Dina. She usually gets angry easily and resorts to violence.
- Hate Sink: Simone is a complete sociopathic bitch with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, who not only doesn't care that Stewart is married, but smugly rubs it in Ryan's face that she's sleeping with him. She even leaks the story herself near the end.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: The Flosse Posse, obviously. They’ve been friends for almost 20 years.
- High-School Sweethearts: More like “college sweethearts.” Stewart and Ryan met in college and got married. Unfortunately, Stewart has been cheating on Ryan, which subverts this trope. But it's played straight with her and Julian (another old friend from college), whom she hooks with at the end of the film when she and Stewart officially split.
- Is This Thing Still On?: Sasha puts her agent on hold, then starts cheering and cursing. Then the agent lets her know she just put him on Facetime.
- Jerkass:
- Simone, Stewart's mistress. She knows Stewart is married, but she continues to sleep with him. She also acts like a bitch towards the Flosse Posse.
- Stewart as well. He constantly cheats on Ryan, has her and her friends put out of their hotel after Dina slaps him (even though she was pretty justified in doing so), and constantly manipulates Ryan into staying with him by playing on her fear of being alone.
- Jerkass Ball: Ryan holds it in the climax when she accuses her friend Sasha of making a story about her cheating husband go public.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Despite Dina's obnoxiousness during her argument with Ryan, she's not wrong about the latter's husband.
- While Simone is definitely a horrid person, she's not wrong in saying that Stewart needs to take responsibility for their child.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Dina may be obnoxious and have a short tempter, but she’s a loyal friend towards Ryan, Sasha, and Lisa and will do anything for them. Even after their whole argument, Dina was obviously hurt and tried to pretend that she wasn’t.
- Karma Houdini: The women get off scot-free for causing a ruckus in the nightclub. Justified in a sense since there were all dressed in disguise.
- Karmic Butt-Monkey: Simone gets some well deserved slapstick. She’s a hate sink as well for being a willing mistress.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Stewart managed to get his Instagram model mistress pregnant with a love child, while his long suffering wife Ryan has tried to conceive for years but failed.
- Loony Friends Improve Your Personality: Friends like Dina and Sasha bring out Lisa’s outgoing and wild side, despite Lisa usually being calm and reserved.
- Lovable Sex Maniac: Dina will proudly flash her chest and grind on any random man she meets, but she's also the most honest and loyal of the Flosse Posse, always keeping her friends' mental well-being in mind while encouraging them to have some fun.
- Male Frontal Nudity: After being kicked out of the upscale hotel they were staying at and having to stay in a cheap motel, a homeless man who was harassing the women ends up flashing them all my baring his genitals on the front window of their room.
- Misplaced Retribution: During their argument, Ryan flat out accuses Sasha of putting her husband on blast for cheating, unaware that it was Simone who went public.
- Mr. Fanservice: Malik appears without a shirt in a few scenes. He even has a nude scene.
- Mrs. Robinson: When Lisa sees Malik, they both become smitten with each other despite Malik being 21 and Lisa apparently being in her 40s and recovering from her divorce.
- Mugging the Monster: Simone intentionally bumps into Dina at a nightclub, completely unaware of how dangerous the latter can be when she gets angry. She promptly pays for it seconds later...when LISA smacks her.
- Nice Girls: Lisa and Ryan.
- Julian is a definite Nice Guy and easily the calmest and nicest character in the film, even giving the Flosse Posse his room in a very nice hotel with no complaints when hearing that they were forced to stay in a filthy motel.
- Ryan's agent Liz is also one as she does her best to support her client and find her the best opportunities while also being very friendly with Flosse Posse and also helping Ryan deal with the scandal near the end and although Ryan improvises with her own speech, Liz is clearly supportive of her regardless of what consequences may have come. It's clear that Liz views her as a friend than a mere client.
- Odd Friendship: Lisa and Dina. Lisa is calm, mature, and soft-spoken. Dina, on the other hand, is obnoxious and a party animal.
- Only One Name: Dina and Malik are the only characters who do not have last names.
- Only Sane Woman: Out of the Flosse Posse, Lisa appears as this. First, when she (with Sasha) attempt to keep Dina from attacking Stewart. Also, when the Flosse Posse argue, she attempted to deescalate the situation.
- Potty Failure: Lisa pisses on herself when she rides a glider in one scene. And then Dina does as well, but on purpose.
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Or girl, in the case of Ryan's agent Elizabeth, played by Kate Walsh. Ryan tries to tell her off firmly to quit using black slang, but Liz completely ignores that.
- Sassy Black Woman: Dina, all the way. She comes off as opinionated and loud most of the time.
- Selective Obliviousness: Dina. She gets fired at the beginning of the film and because of her nature of hearing what she wants to hear, believes that she'll still have a job once she returns. After she leaves, her bosses just stare at each other in incredulousness.
- Shout-Out: This isn't the first time Queen Latifah has played a journalist with a feisty personality.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Even Lisa's mother admits that Dina is foul-mouthed.
- Survival Mantra: Whenever the stress of hiding the actual state of her marriage starts getting to her, Ryan starts to chant "I am strong, I am powerful, I am beautiful" to herself to stave off the tears.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Flosse Posse give these to each other during their argument. Fortunately, they apologize to each other at the end.
- Team Mom: Lisa. Justified, as Lisa is actually a mother.
- True Companions: The Flosse Posse. Even after their big argument, they couldn’t just simply abandon each other.
- Womanchild: Dina has shades of this, due to her being obnoxious, loud, and impulsive. Her impulsiveness is the reason why she was fired from her job and the reason why the Flosse Posse had to move to a dirty motel.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Dina slaps Stewart because he cheated on Ryan, and Stewart made no effort to fight back.
