David Dobkin
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Connections, in both directions
The most bizarre, yet kind of funny, thing about "The Wedding Ringer" is it seems a bit of a rip-off of the 2005 comedy "Wedding Crashers."
And to help him prepare for the nuptials, Jimmy and Doug infiltrate some stranger's wedding, their zany antics modeled after Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn's in Wedding Crashers .
But too often the "Wedding Ringer" looks like a hodgepodge of "Hitch," "Wedding Crashers" and "Bridesmaids" — something borrowed, something blue and all of it half-baked.
"The Wedding Ringer" began life more than a decade ago as "The Golden Tux," a screenplay by Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender, but sat neglected while similar concepts ("Wedding Crashers," "I Love You, Man") made it to the screen.
“The Wedding Ringer” borrows liberally from “Hitch” and “Wedding Crashers,” two comedies that came out nearly a decade ago, while completely missing what made them worth borrowing from in the first place.
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016)
Directed by Jake Szymanski
influenced by Wedding Crashers (2005)
Plot Themes
Indeed, the movie that eventuates is less like a case of colouring within the clear lines sketched out by other matrimony-centric attempts at cinematic hilarity such as evident precursor Wedding Crashers, and more akin to grabbing a handful of previously successful elements, throwing them into a popular template, and seeing were the pieces start to fit together — and, in some cases, where they leave gaps or push against each other.
And before you can say millennial Wedding Crashers, we're off.
The movie reaches beyond “Wedding Crashers” in raw dog terms.
There's a good reason why R-rated comedies like "Wedding Crashers" and "Bridesmaids" have been so popular and that's because weddings, as a rule, tend to be prone to hilarious chaos.
The comic riches here are enough to make this movie a fairer version of Wedding Crashers for our decade, a recommendation you can take all the way to the altar.
Credited screenwriters Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien worked on the Neighbors series, but they also crib from Wedding Crashers to the extent that the Stangles refer to the movie, and a specific plot point, directly.
Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, hoping no doubt to recap their “Wedding Crashers” vibe, reteam in “The Internship.”
It’s as if Google resolved to pay Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson a few million dollars to reprise their Wedding Crashers characters for a corporate video about salesmen who teach the company’s whiz kids a thing or two, then decided the line separating advertising and entertainment was slippery enough that Google might as well turn that conceit into a full-length film.
It may reunite “Wedding Crashers” stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, with a setup that mirrors that of “Old School,” the adults-in-college laugh riot that starred Vaughn and Wilson’s brother Luke, but “The Internship” is more of a standard fish-out-of-water comedy, while also owing something of a debt to the snobs vs. slobs comedies of the 1980s.
Ever since Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson charmed us with their buddy comedy antics in Wedding Crashers, people have been wondering if these two stars would ever reunite again to rekindle the hilarious fire that once was.
The inclusion of several laugh-out-loud funny interludes perpetuates the movie's engaging vibe, and it does, in the movie's early stages, seem as though The Internship is going to top Wedding Crashers, Vaughn and Wilson's first comedic pairing, in terms of entertainment value.
…eight years on from Wedding Crashers , the pair successfully rekindle their irascible shtick.
But, borrowing an idea from the great 1951 film Strangers on a Train, Rathbone trades crimes with Wu Yip (Donnie Yen, from Iron Monkey), who will perform the nine murders in exchange for the seal.
He agreed to swap slayings (a la Hitchcock's "Strangers On a Train") with an ambitiously evil Chinese nobleman ("Iron Monkey's" terrific, deadpan scowling Donnie Yen) who is now obligated to help him become king by killing everyone in line for the throne before him.
There have been some good ones ("All of Me," "Switch," "Face/Off," "Freaky Friday"), but they're few and far between and "The Change-Up" is one of the worst.
But Bateman and Reynolds never get into the hall-of-mirrors mimicry that Nicolas Cage and John Travolta so enjoyed in “Face/Off.”
As for the acting, no one will confuse what Bateman and Reynolds do as similar to how Nicolas Cage and John Travolta handled a like-minded situation in John Woo’s underrated actioner, Face/Off.
(It’s the one aspect that the similarly themes and far superior “Face/Off,” with Nicolas Cage and John Travolta switching identities, disregarded).
It's always fun to see good actors ape each other (think Face/Off) and a particular joy to see Bateman get to cut loose.
John and Jeremy's hapless attempts to bluff their way through a weekend at the Cleary estate by pretending to be venture capitalists from New Hampshire are oddly reminiscent of writer-director Preston Sturges' 1940s social satires, such as "Sullivan's Travels," in which a rich filmmaker decides to live among the common people to get a taste of the real world, or "The Palm Beach Story," about a flighty wife who leaves her penniless husband to hobnob with millionaires.
John and Jeremy's hapless attempts to bluff their way through a weekend at the Cleary estate by pretending to be venture capitalists from New Hampshire are oddly reminiscent of writer-director Preston Sturges' 1940s social satires, such as "Sullivan's Travels," in which a rich filmmaker decides to live among the common people to get a taste of the real world, or "The Palm Beach Story," about a flighty wife who leaves her penniless husband to hobnob with millionaires.
Isla Fisher, the feisty redhead who stole every scene she had in Wedding Crashers, shows a continued flair for physical comedy coupled with a sweet and sassy style as Confessions of a Shopaholic's Rebecca.
But that would be unfair to IslaFisher, a comic powerhouse who had her breakout role as the nymphomaniac sister in Wedding Crashers (2005) and who seizes her long-awaited chance at stardom with both hands.
Isla Fisher, a steady scene-stealer in films such as 2005's " Wedding Crashers ," 2007's " The Lookout ," and 2008's " Definitely, Maybe ," receives her first lead role in "Confessions of a Shopaholic."
Fisher, you might recall, was the find of "Wedding Crashers" (she played the slutty sister).
Rebecca Bloomwood's (Isla Fisher, "Wedding Crashers," "Definitely, Maybe") job at a gardening magazine is not equal to her taste in designer fashion.
Star Isla Fisher (“Wedding Crashers”) is charming enough, and a gifted physical comic, but this material is so predictable and leaden that even she has no prayer of keeping it afloat.
William threatens Jeremy not to consider Gloria another "notch on your belt" ("I'm beltless," he protests, weakly); John is horrified but goes along when Kathleen make him "feel her hooters"; Gloria's middle-of-the-night bondage scene makes Jeremy feel "like Jodie Foster in The Accused"; and eventually, a drunken Jeremy confesses his growing affection for Gloria to Father Gibson (Henry Gibson), after all ("Maybe I'm a little crazy").
Wilson is as blandly charming and recessive as in The Life Aquatic; with drunk-auctioneer delivery of lines like "The proper girl in the hat just eye-fucked the shit out of me," the perpetually riled Vaughn can generate a modicum of goodwill, one immediately negated by lines like "I felt like Jodie Foster in The Accused last night."
Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
influenced by Wedding Crashers (2005)
Characters
Mostly, he takes pot shots at a ditsy blonde named Madison (Zoey Deutch), who oscillates between sidesplitting and annoying, recalling Isla Fisher’s “stage-five clinger” in “Wedding Crashers” (2005).
A scattering of bared female bosoms and one episode of simulated under-the-table masturbation reminiscent of Goodbye, Columbus is all that it takes to do the trick, but the pace and editing never falter and the sex never becomes unduly sordid or turgid.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Directed by George Roy Hill
influenced Wedding Crashers (2005)
Characters Visuals
David Dobkin’s Wedding Crashers, from a screenplay by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher, is the most exhilarating entertainment to emerge this year from the failed, forlorn factory town of Hollywood, largely because of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, the best high-low comedy team since the hey-hey days of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973).
…even dare to rip off the bicycle scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid .
At this point, the film becomes Meet the Parents with two daughters and Christopher Walken in the De Niro role, though with a few side trips to The Graduate (Jane Seymour as Clearys wife makes a splendidly demented Mrs. Robinson), Annie Hall (Keir ODonnell in a gay variation of the troubled-brother role once played by Walken), and a ribald reference to Shampoo.
It’s when the action turns to the John-Claire romance, however, that the script falls apart with characters now just plain caricatures (it’s painful to watch Jane Seymour, as Claire’s mom, doing another “The Graduate” seduction scene).
On the surface this bears some resemblance to Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, a justly revered classic and a prototype for all carnal-buddy flicks that followed, though most are nowhere near as transgressive.
The flick brings two hours of great big sloppy buck-wild laughs by morphing into a cross between “Meet the Parents” and “Some Like It Hot.”
Garden State and Grosse Pointe Blank, are just a couple that come to mind, but I suppose you could trace this plot all the way back to the biblical story of the prodigal son.
Taking a leaf of the Hotel Sorrento and Grosse Pointe Blank playbook, the film contrasts the lead character’s metropolitan hustle bustle — time is money, talk to the hand, ain’t got time for this — as a personality trait dramatically at odds with the atavistic values associated with their small-time origins.
Remember in " The Party " when Peter Sellers was trying to cut his Cornish game hen, and it flew off his plate and onto the hat of the society lady?
At least 90 percent of its speaking parts are female, but that doesn't mean Bridesmaids is a chick flick — any more than The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Wedding Crashers or The Hangover was a dude flick, or whatever single-syllable masculine nickname rhymes with "flick."
It feels like a direct response to movies like “Wedding Crashers,’’ “The Hangover,’’ and “I Love You, Man,’’ in which men have colonized and mutated territory that once was the sole province of women.
And in the end, it fails to develop an identity much beyond the stereotype of an estrogen pastiche of "Wedding Crashers" or "The Hangover," with a kick-line of mismatched gal-pals in aubergine taffeta.
If you have begun to tire of blokey-jokey films such as Wedding Crashers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Hangover , then try this female-oriented movie that covers some of the same territory but from the distaff side.
Ladies, prepare to laugh.This riotous R-rated offering from producer Judd Apatow ("Knocked Up") and director Paul Feig (creator of TV's "Freaks and Geeks") gives the female of the species the same sort of unapologetic, buddy-based chuckler guys have gotten a dozen times over with films like "Old School" (2003), "Wedding Crashers" (2005) and "The Hangover" (2009).But it isn't fair to pigeonhole the film based on gender, so we'll state it simply: "Bridesmaids" is the best comedy of 2011 so far."Saturday…
Wedding Crashers proved that it was much more fun to be an uninvited guest than to tie the knot.
David Dobkin’s Wedding Crashers, from a screenplay by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher, is the most exhilarating entertainment to emerge this year from the failed, forlorn factory town of Hollywood, largely because of Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, the best high-low comedy team since the hey-hey days of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973).
There's Something About Mary (1998)
Directed by Bobby Farrelly
influenced Wedding Crashers (2005)
Themes
That's far more than a raunchy summer comedy needs to do, and that's why the film will, like the Farrellys' "There's Something About Mary," transcend the mucky genre from whence it emerges.
David Dobkin’s “Wedding Crashers” was meant to be this summer’s “There’s Something About Mary,” but after an initial promising first reel, the picture soon descends into a maudlin, unconvincing and disappointing romantic comedy.
Like Old School or There’s Something About Mary, it’s the kind of picture where you’ll want to rehash all the outrageously funny moments with your friends.
Much has been made of Wedding Crashers’ bid to reinvigorate the R-rated comedy, a genre that’s lain mostly dormant since There’s Something About Mary.
The inclusion of several laugh-out-loud funny interludes perpetuates the movie's engaging vibe, and it does, in the movie's early stages, seem as though The Internship is going to top Wedding Crashers, Vaughn and Wilson's first comedic pairing, in terms of entertainment value.