Wedding
Crashers (***1/2)
review by Jon
Waterman
By day, John and Jeremy are two divorce mediators. They make
their living off of other people’s misfortune and troubles.
On the other side of it, they also reap the benefits of couples’ happiness
and good intentions. They crash weddings. Equipped with fake
names and an emotionally charged backstory, they invite themselves
to every wedding during the busy season in order to hook up
with some single bridesmaids. On the last wedding of the season,
the duo might just have to pull some overtime in order to win
their prize, but will it be worth all the trouble?
This is the movie I wanted “Meet the Parents” to
be. You have the similar situation of a guy meeting the family
for the first time, with an eccentric cast of characters all
around them. What this movie does different is that it puts
all that madcap activity and tones it down into a more believable
and (more importantly) a much, much less predictable progression.
There’s also no real pity for the protagonists here,
because they aren’t so innocent themselves, where as “Parents” made
me want to scream when the lead character didn’t defend
himself or allow an explanation to be heard.
I’d also like to commend the writers Steve Faber and
Bob Fisher (in their feature debuts) for rarely going for the
obvious joke. The movie is set in Washington DC. The last wedding
they crash is that of an important politician’s daughter
and some dude. How many political jokes will you find in the
film? None. There’s no hidden agenda. There’s no
left or right wing bashing. There’s no topical humor
of any kind. Avoiding those easy, potentially lame jokes gives
this film a greater chance of becoming timeless (if the public
so wishes).
But I don’t think all the credit for making this film
so funny belongs to the scriptwriters. Owen Wilson (John) and
Vince Vaughn (Jeremy) play off each other very well and probably
improvise quite a bit of the dialogue. Their very natural sounding
interchanges, and not the more physical or situational jokes,
count for the majority of the good laughs. These characters
are so strange and occasionally random, yet oddly familiar
and relatable (even if you don’t have anything in common
with them). It’s hard not to get caught up with them.
The buddy system carries this movie, but at one point it loses
it breath. The movie is just about two hours long, and so a
little bit of down time is expected. However, here they take
about a twenty-minute break to further the storyline and pull
us out of the friend dynamic that makes the film so fun. But
even with that lag, this is still probably going to end up
being the funniest comedy of the year. It’s smart, (mostly)
rapid-fire, and incredibly entertaining. Who wouldn’t
want to crash a party like that?
respond to jon@filmbrats.com
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