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'Wedding Crashers': Heart and humor succeed despite the raunch
The Middletown Journal
Watching the brashly hilarious "Wedding Crashers" is like getting a frilly, scented wedding invitation that comes with a copy of Hustler magazine.
That's not only because it's about a pair of guys whose mission in life is to pick up (and lay down) single women at weddings. The movie is unapologetically raunchy, but in the end it has a heart after all.
New Line Productions
B+ The verdict: Bawdy humor may be the drawing card, but heart and humor win out in the end. Director: David Dobkin On the web |
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Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson respectively play Jeremy and John — divorce mediators who spend their off hours at weddings posing as those distant relatives no one can quite remember. They reason that girls are at their most vulnerable and aroused when matrimony is in the air, so they happily embark on a string of love 'em and leave 'em escapades.
However, when they crash the wedding hosted by a powerful politician, Jeremy and John get more than they bargained for. John falls for Claire (Rachel McAdams), the bridesmaid who cracks up at the bride and groom's dopey wedding vows with a sailing theme. Another bridesmaid, Gloria (Isla Fisher), latches on to Jeremy.
The problems are that Claire is engaged, and Gloria is in even hotter heat than John and Jeremy put together.
Vaughn and Owen's chemistry sizzles, with Vaughn playing the go-for-broke adventurous type, while Wilson balances the scales with his goofy but lovable charm. They volley rapid-fire banter with enough ease and confidence to impress Cary Grant.
Their love interests are equally good. After making her name with strong work in "Mean Girls" and "The Notebook" last year, McAdams definitively proves she is a star. Her utterly endearing performance gives "Wedding Crashers" much of its heart, with Fisher supplying the raging female hormones. She plays Gloria with unrestrained passion — in every sense of the word. I hope to see more of her soon.
"Wedding Crashers" uses bawdy humor as its drawing card, and there's plenty to go around. In what is sure to become this movie's version of the notorious "hair gel" scene in "There's Something About Mary," Gloria gives Jeremy a "massage," if you will, in an area just under the table — while her family is present.
"Wedding Crashers" has so much energy it ends up overstaying its welcome. Once cracks develop between Jeremy and John, the screenplay by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher takes too long to resolve them, and director David Dobkin's pacing flags. I also could have done without the cliches of the gay character who horrifies the red-blooded males and the dotty old lady who shoots off her mouth at grossly inappropriate times.
Hollywood commonly assumes such "outrageous" humor is the key to comedies like this one and the "American Pie" movies, but it isn't. Sure, the raunch may get butts in seats, but "Wedding Crashers" succeeds the same way "There's Something About Mary" and the "American Pie" series did: they have heart and humor. It's only fitting that a movie called "Wedding Crashers" understands that too.
