Originally published 7/26/2005
Wedding Crashers
Director: David Dobkin
Writers: Steve Faber & Bob Fisher
Producers: Peter Abrams, Robert L. Levy, Andrew Panay
Stars: Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Christopher Walken, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Jane Seymour, Bradley Cooper
Here is a movie with more ideas than it knows what to do with. Wedding Crashers is an explosion of plot strands, a comedy of spinning plates sustained for longer than you would have expected by the indefatigable efforts of its stars. While in the end they cannot close the deal and settle for a lumpy, meandering third act and a rather half-hearted climax of obligations, their commitment to the material makes this more surprising, and more winning, than your average studio romantic comedy.
It helps to have people who can talk. While too often movies seem populated by pretty people who can barely speak in coherent phrases – much less sell the idea that they understand them – Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, playing best friends John and Jeremy, speak in torrents and enjoy it. You get the impression that their job mediating divorce cases is merely a hobby that gives them the space to indulge in their favorite activity – talking to each other. In both cases we have an actor who understands that the pacing and inflection of a line can oftentimes be funnier than the words themselves, and that speaking more slowly to make sure the audience understands is not funny at all.
It can border on exhausting, since neither is a natural straight man there is little to temper any excesses. But this is a story of excess, centered around perhaps the most excessive event in our culture – the wedding.
John and Jeremy love weddings. They love the food, they love the way the band almost always gets around to playing Shout, and they really love the bottomless supply of hormonally-charged bridesmaids. Without enough legitimate wedding invites to sate their appetite, they have made an elaborate recreation (complete with as many by-laws as the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition) out of forging identities and insinuating themselves into the weddings of strangers.
Jeremy forgives these shallow pleasures by saying that they are young and foolish and therefore entitled. But it is gradually sinking in for John that, as he tells Jeremy, they are not really that young anymore.
Still, new nuptials offer new challenges, and Jeremy sells John on “crashing” the excessively tasteful wedding of Christina Cleary (Jenny Alden), one of the three very comely daughters of a Treasury Secretary and rumored Presidential candidate (Christopher Walken). These daughters are so broadly appealing they even come in blonde (Alden), brunette (Rachel MacAdams), and redhead (Isla Fisher). John fixates on brunette Claire, who is kind-hearted, cares about the environment, and is engaged to a political scion and all-around jerkoff with the fantastic name Sack Lodge (Bradley Cooper). As in many romcoms he must work overtime to prove he is an unsuitable fiancée; every scene adds one more to the list of negative attributes, like he is trying to top himself each time out – boorish, over-competitive, malicious, short-tempered, vain, sexist, unfaithful, etc.
Jeremy, meanwhile, sets his sights on the bright-eyed young redhead Gloria (Isla Fisher), who seems to embody that old adage about how when the Gods want to punish us, they give us what we want. She latches on to Jeremy and invites both crashers out to the Cleary mansion for a weekend of yachting and quail hunting and other stuffy rich New England pleasures – she sells her father on it by holding her breath and stamping her feet. John sees this as a golden opportunity to work further on Claire, Jeremy grows increasingly alarmed by the adorable, sing-songy obsession Gloria is developing.
It takes a real high-wire balancing of kittenish playfulness and maniacal devotion to knock a veteran swinger like Vince Vaughn off his stride; and Fisher, like Allyson Hannigan in the first American Pie, is this movie’s secret weapon and best asset. The evolution of their relationship is in all ways much more fun than Wilson and McAdams, who must play the square and familiar courtship where he finally gets through to her, she has doubts, his secret is revealed, and you can fill in the rest.
The movie’s long middle section cannot resist piling on the quirks. One would think having Christopher Walken as the father of the house would be obstacle enough; he is strangely underutilized, except in one laugh-out-loud scene that is too difficult to describe, but requires he studiously ignore damning details in the bedroom in which Jeremy is sleeping.
Anyway, on top of that we have the gay artist son Todd (Keir O’Donnell), who hunches up like Renfield and feels oppressed by everyone. Then there is Cleary’s salacious wife Kathleen (Jane Seymour), who really wants to get John’s opinion on her recent cosmetic enhancements. And the matriarch of the family, Grandma Mary (Ellen Albertini Dow), is, like all old women in comedies, expected to shout and cuss and say bawdy things.
And then we have a high-profile cameo that pops in near the end, part of the evolving fraternity of performers who have dominated screen comedy in the last five years. It says a lot about his rising star that all he needs to do is walk on camera in a bathrobe and the audience cheers.
Director David Dobkin (Clay Pigeons, Shanghai Knights) doesn’t always calculate his set-ups in the best way, relying too often on close-ups when delicate interaction is so key to the humor. The commitment of his actors overcomes his rather flat visual approach, though, to his credit, he proves you can still get comic mileage out of a gray and dignified man turning to you with a disgusted look on his face.
Once it comes time to try and gather up all the material it has introduced, Wedding Crashers falters and starts chucking subplots overboard in a bailing bucket. But with the state of film comedy these days it is tough to fault a movie for having too much inspiration. What survives unscathed, including its essential “R” rating, is raunchy and effective comedy, and two stars who make it possible to enjoy just hearing them speak it.