Wedding Crashers (2005)
Directed by David Dobkin
John and his buddy Jeremy are emotional criminals who know how to use a woman's hopes and dreams for their own carnal gain. Their modus operandi: crashing weddings. Normally, they meet guests who want to toast the romantic day with a random hook-up. But when John meets Claire, he discovers what true love – and heartache – feels like.
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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.
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."
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.
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 .
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).
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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).
Just as a character in Mike Nichols' underrated and funnier What Planet Are You From? (2000) hung out at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to pick up women, Vaughn and Wilson do so at weddings.
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.”
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?
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.
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Like the earlier "Chocolate Factory" movie, "Charlie" is based on a 1964 book by the late Roald Dahl (another of whose tales, "James and the Giant Peach," was turned into a 1996 animated feature that Tim Burton produced).
And then there's Grandma Cleary (Ellen Albertini Dow, Road Trip), a social disaster whose reminiscences about FDR trail off into a jaw-dropping ramble on Eleanor's lesbianism in the crudest possible terms, before she turns her attention to Todd's "artistic" nature.
In many ways its a triumph of deceptive marketing – advertised as very much a male comedy ala “Old School” or “Road Trip”, it starts out in a deliberate display of macho hedonism.
Of course I’m talking about the comedic talents of Vaughn Wilson his brother Luke Wilson Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell who just keep churning out one hilarious film– Old School Dodgeball Starsky & Hutch –after another in various tag-team combinations.
Please note: Obvious references to Animal House, Porky's, American Pie, and Old School will not be used in this review.
“Starsky & Hutch” had Stiller and Owen Wilson with Vaughn in a secondary role and a cameo by Ferrell, and “Old School” had Luke Wilson, Vaughn and Ferrell, “Dodgeball” had Vaughn and Stiller, and “Anchorman” starred Ferrell but had cameos by Stiller, Luke Wilson and Vaughn, and I think they were all in “Zoolander,” and do you see what I mean?
The point here is not that they fall in love, which they do, but that hey do so in the most awkward, obnoxious, predictable way possible: Old School meets Meet the Parents.
Wedding Crashers starts off as a nasty, immoral comic romp, serving up some of the best R-rated humor since Old School.
In many ways its a triumph of deceptive marketing – advertised as very much a male comedy ala “Old School” or “Road Trip”, it starts out in a deliberate display of macho hedonism.