Saturday 30 May 2009

No. 143 : Wedding Crashers (2005)


Wedding Crashers at the IMDb

Here’s a film that looks like it will be good for a few laughs but when you sit through the thing you realise that it’s a lot of preachy sentimental guff. And I love you man for hearing that.

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are the titular crashers, a laborious process that seems to involve a lot of work to get some free canapés and score some chicks - haven’t these guys ever heard of the free buffet at Hooters? Basically they finagle their way into weddings and work hard at being the life and soul of the party. They don’t mention how they get in the seating plan for dinner but for my money I imagine most hosts would welcome them as most weddings painfully dull.

The first 20 minutes is basically an extended montage of various weddings and demonstrates the versatility of our fellows - they can do Jewish, Indian you name it. As the montage closes we see them bed an unfeasible parade of lovelies and frankly we’re all as jealous as Hell. But wait! Are they really happy and fulfilled? Who cares? Let’s have more laughs. Sadly no, the remainder of our film deals with the realisation that the fun times are fleeting and we should get married to be really happy.

The turning point comes at a wedding hosted by a US senator played by Christopher Walken, who seems in strangely muted form. After our guys steal the show they are invited back to the family spread for the weekend. Owen is keen to go as he’s taken a shine to Rachel McAdams whereas Vince is less so due to the amorous attentions of the clearly loopy Isla Fisher. Of course they go and over the course of the weekend have various misadventures with Jane Seymour’s horny mother and the artist brother who takes a shine to Vince.

All is not well however as McAdams' slimy fiancée smells a rat and exposes our guys fabricated tales. They rightly get booted out but their friendship suffers as the love struck Wilson can’t cope with rejection. Vaughn meanwhile is still seeing Fisher leaving Wilson no choice but to seek council from the legendary crasher Chazz, Will Ferrell, who has now graduated to crashing funerals. With the family now strangely happy for Vaughn to marry their daughter it’s up to Wilson to crash one last wedding in the hope of a happy ending for all.

I enjoyed this film a lot less than I should have done given the talent on show. The leads are all likable when they are misbehaving but as soon as it gets serious it goes downhill fast. Some of the sentimental pap is barf inducing especially from Wilson whose serial stalker comes out with some real mawkish rubbish. Vaughn is little better offering hugs and ‘love yous’ every five minutes. The only one who comes out with any credibility is Ferrell who sticks to the mantra and seems to be doing fine despite being painted as a loser.

I did feel sorry for the fiancé character who seemed the only one on the ball and gets vilified for exposing the con men. His character gets assassinated when he’s rude to the servant and eyes up some chicks but at least he is up front about it. His downfall at the end isn’t really earned although I did like Vaughn’s ‘Ike Turner’ line.

The other thing that irritated me was the constant quoting of the rules - yeah like they’re going to learn over 100 nuggets of wisdom and live by them. Beer and chicks should have covered it. There were a few good bits including a Milftastic turn by Seymour but overall the message was too in your face and it smothered what comedy the film may have had. It was also troubling to see Wilson with a suicide book only months before his own attempt - sloppy work props department!

Best Bit : Feel them
‘W’ Rating : 11/23

No comments: