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Wedding Crashers review
2005.07.23 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole
They have 84 rules? How can they remember 84 rules? [official site] |
Holy crap. I mean holy crap. Who knew movies could be this funny?
Seriously.
From the surreal opening of a cracked divorce mediation between Rebecca De Mornay and Dwight Yoakam to the bizarre, migraine-inducing, utterly preposterous ending, Wedding Crashers is wildly, unbelievably, inconceivably, hysterically funny.
What has everyone else been doing wrong all this time?
The plot? Yes, there is a plot, more or less. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn team up as a pair of divorce mediators who crash weddings to cruise for vulnerable ladies. They're getting a little old for such shenanigans, of course, and they know it, but they don't have any other ideas. But it turns out that the old proverb about dogs and fleas holds similarly true if you lie down with bridesmaids.
[T]he old proverb about dogs and fleas holds similarly true if you lie down with bridesmaids. |
So Wilson strays from their usual plan and falls for rich and engaging (and vulnerable) Rachel McAdams (The Notebook, Mean Girls), which gets them invited to her family's palatial Hyannisport-like estate. Her father, who happens to be the Secretary of the US Treasury, also happens to be Christopher Walken (certainly part of my dream presidential administration*). Meanwhile, Vaughn has accidentally snagged himself on McAdams's sister Isla Fisher (I Heart Huckabees), a "stage 5 clinger."
Correction: It's actually the clinger who gets them invited to the family estate. —AC
Her father... Secretary of the US Treasury, also happens to be Christopher Walken (certainly part of my dream presidential administration). |
It's too bad McAdams is already spoken for by old-money playboy Bradley Cooper (Alias) as the improbably-named Sack Lodge. The ever-lovely Jane Seymour gets a graceful part as the slightly off-kilter matriarch, but she and a few others get precious little play with Wilson and Vaughn cutting a path of comic destruction thru their east coast island estate. The Caribbean butler and the befuddled priest, for example, must surely have been better-developed characters in the original draft of the screenplay.
Written by newcomers Bob Fisher and Steve Faber, the film was directed by David Dobkins, whose experience with Wilson's brand of goofiness from Shanghai Knights must have been invaluable. Vaughn is the fast-talking, slightly-loopy foil that Wilson's rambling dreamer has always needed. You get the feeling these two really could talk each other into almost anything.
"You shut your mouth when you're talking to me!" |
What's incredible tho is how this film doesn't build. It just is. In the opening divorce mediation scene, De Mornay spits out the line: "You shut your mouth when you're talking to me!" that makes everyone—audience and actors—do a double-take. And when Wilson and Vaughn get into the summer wedding season soon after, we're off at a gallop.
I prefer my cads a bit less slimy, if only for the sake of the female lead.... |
The story slows to catch its breath when we finally meet up with McAdams, but the laughs don't lose any kick. She's a sweet, slightly-spoiled princess in a decidedly Kennedyesque family (they play overly-aggressive touch football, brag about their charity work, and carry on casual sexcapades with little discretion). Bradley Cooper has the thankless role of the boyfriend, a man we must hate, but who is nevertheless too, too hateable. I prefer my cads a bit less slimy, if only for the sake of the female lead, who must have loved him at one time.
[T]he protagonists are at least as crazy as the family. |
The crazy family intrigue will be familiar to anyone who remembers The Secret of My Success and similar films, but it's done well here, and the fact that the protagonists are at least as crazy as the family makes all the difference.
Nobody but Will Ferrell could swagger into the third act of a powerhouse comedy and actually amp it up. |
The inevitable discovery and failed attempts at reconciliation change the tone, but the gags keep coming: Wilson and Vaughn falling out, Wilson sliding into despair, Vaughn pulling him out of it, Wilson retreating deeper into self-pity... with Will Ferrell. Nobody but Will Ferrell could swagger into the third act of a powerhouse comedy and actually amp it up. He's even crazier and more pathetic than Wilson and Vaughn, and it takes that to snap Wilson out of his funk.
[I]t ends this way because it's a movie about weddings, and all movies about weddings end this way, more or less. |
The third act may be a bit weak, but the ending—the aforementioned bizarre, migraine-inducing, utterly preposterous ending—is the real weakness of the film. It feels forced and clichéd, as if it ends this way because it's a movie about weddings and all movies about weddings end this way, more or less. It's the sort of scene that ought to get a student screenwriter an automatic F for being so conventional that it ignores all common sense, but by the time it comes we hardly care. The charm of the characters have built up plenty of goodwill to overcome it. We have to have an ending sort of like this, so this one will do. Besides, the payback that Vaughn delivers to his tormentor is priceless.
Notes
* Others in my dream presidential administration:
- President: Dennis Hopper
- Vice-President: Glenn Close
- Secretary of State: Joe Pesci
- Secretary of Defense: James Gandolfini
- Department of Homeland Security Director: Sharon Stone
- CIA Director: Bruce Dern
- National Security Adviser: Johnny Depp
- Joint Chiefs: All the Baldwin brothers, even Billy
f e e d b a c k
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