Directed by: David Dobkin
Starring: Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Bradley Cooper, Christopher Walken, Jane Seymour
To John Beckwith (Wilson) and Jeremy Todd (Vaughn), "wedding season" is better than Christmas. What exactly constitutes wedding season is anyone's guess. John and Jeremy are experts at assuming phony identities and crashing weddings in order to seduce available women. They have turned this practice into an art form, citing rules handed down by the King of Wedding Crashers himself to keep themselves in line. Rule Number 1 is never leave your fellow crasher behind.
Dozens of rules follow. The guys can recite them chapter and verse.
Wedding Crashers is full of energy and has a heart. John and Jeremy are nice guys and the best of friends who find a niche and excel at it. We see multitudes of women melting over lines such as, "They say people only use 10% of our brains. I say we only use 10% of our hearts." Sometimes they can't keep up with their own lies. One failed conquest asks, "Would you say you're just 50% full of shit?"
John and Jeremy crash the wedding of the Secretary of Defense's daughter and find themselves invited to the Secretary's house for the weekend. Secretary Cleary (Walken) takes a liking to the two men who say they are venture capitalists. Cleary has two other unmarried daughters who become involved with the crashers. The sexually adventurous Gloria (Fisher) has her eye on Jeremy, who finds she may be too much even for him. John falls for Claire (McAdams), who has a good-looking, mean stud fiancé (Cooper) named Sack. Sack is such a creep that it's amazing a doll like Claire would be with him, but I suppose he is just one more obstacle for John to overcome in his quest. What would a romantic comedy be without a fiancé just waiting to be dumped? Sack is just more violent than the rest. \He lays out Jeremy with dirty hits in a touch football game and beats up John at least twice. Come to think of it, I've never seen a romantic rival be so mean. We have come to like Cooper in the years following in films like Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, American Sniper, and even in some not-so-good films. He exudes charisma and likability, so it's kind of strange to see him play such a sociopathic prick. He's pretty good at it too.
Wilson and Vaughn have a smooth cadence that underlines their scenes. We sense their years of friendship and their mutual love of wedding season. Vaughn is more verbal and boisterous than Wilson and their contrast fits right. Yet, Vaughn suffers the most when they visit the Clearys. Besides being crushed in the football game, he is also tied up by not just Gloria but the Clearys brooding, gay artist son. A quail hunting expedition goes bad for him too.
Wedding Crashers ends like most romantic comedies do. Will Ferrell makes a cameo appearance as Chaz, the aforementioned King Of Wedding Crashers who lives with his mom but scores big at funerals as well. The fact that he has to stoop to picking up grieving women at funerals says much about his life, but we don't think of that at the time. Other than Sack, the people in Wedding Crashers are funny and we enjoy their company. There is a foul-mouthed grandmother who makes everyone cringe at dinner. She was employed to appeal to the least common denominator, but I prefer the scenes where Jeremy and John make toasts, eat wedding cake, make bets on which readings from the bible will be read, and base their probability of getting lucky on observations of the ladies. "A tattoo on the lower back. Might as well be a bullseye." It's rare that we see people on screen excel at something, even if it's something as goofy as wedding crashing. We may as well enjoy it.
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