I really tried to like THE WEDDING CRASHERS. I even watched it a second time on DVD just to give it another chance. I reckon Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are some of the funniest actors working today. In fact, Owen Wilson's role in the fantastic romantic comedy THE WENDELL BAKER STORY helped push it into my movie pantheon. So it saddens me to say that this movie is a real let-down. Not a real stinker, just very very mediocre. Let me break it down for you. The first half is a weak frat-boy comedy. Vaughn and Wilson play two guys who crash weddings to pick up ch*cks. The jokes are okay but not laugh-out loud funny - certainly not as good as anything in OLD SCHOOL. Then, about half way through, the movie loses its nerve and switches into a super-cliche love story. Unfortunately, having attempted to create comedy caricatures for the previous 45 minutes, it is hard to empathise with the main characters when they go into the "love story" phase of the film. Eventually the movie just runs out of steam and not even a cameo from Will Ferrell can save it. Worse still, the movie commits the cardinal sin of hiring the Don that is Christopher Walken and then giving him absolutely nothing to do. All in all, having spent forty million dollars, all the producers have done is guarantee the brief popularity of the phrase "ERRONEOUS!"
THE WEDDING CRASHERS is now available on region 1 and region 2 DVD, but seriously, just rent OLD SCHOOL instead.
Agree with your review - would add that the film had yet another split personality. It tried, at times, to deal with some fairly serious and adult themes, only to chicken out from developing them into a serious and adult movie. It seemed incongruous.
ReplyDeleteFor example, the gay son who becomes the family reject - it *wasn't* funny, it wasn't frat-boy comedy - but it wasn't a serious movie either, nor was the plot line ever developed. This, along with other potentially serious plot-lines that were treated with levity, left me with a pervading feeling of un-easiness that prevented me from really enjoying the humour.
Sure, the jokes themselves weren't funny enough to make it a laugh riot - but even so, no reason to litter a film with uncomfortable depth, never exploited, but always there as a thorn in the side of light entertainment.
In many ways, this was an opportunity missed. It struck me that it'd be easy for a serious director to mould the plot a little, put it in French, and have a La Regle du Jeu on his hands - a serious examination of class struggle, or of the outsider, or a simple moral tale about what's really important in life. But I guess that's not what hollywood wants.
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