Wedding Crashers

Hell yes, long live rampant sexism in the movies. Of course you couldn’t be seen dead doing it in an Australian flick – it seems that movies about deeply disturbed and distressed druggies, or over the top westerns saturated with brutality, or introspective feminist tracts on the brutality of men are all the go. Heck, Muriel’s Wedding seems so long ago.

Whereas Wedding Crashers is a very simple and satisfying tale. It’s about two guys – maybe lawyers, maybe marriage counsellors or dispute resolution types, it’s all a bit vague – who crash weddings so they can have the time of their life, get pissed and fuck any of the available women made excitable by all the signs of wedded bliss. It’s one long cruise in search of nooky, with all kinds of arcane rules to be followed in the hunt.

Owen Wilson, maybe slightly more the hero because he picks up the pretty one, and Vince Vaughn, going way over the top and out of sight while picking up the kinky one, roll through proceedings in a way that makes the tag line “Hide Your Bridesmaids” seem like an understatement.

Wilson, who manages to be cute via his voice and a nose that … well, let’s just call it a fine nose, a noble nose …is always fun to watch, and here he’s in his element, turning sleaze into charm. Vince Vaughn rants at a thousand words pm when he gets going (like he’s overdosed on forties screwball comedies), and is always on the money when playing it for laughs.

The comedy is pretty basic – the pick up routines play fair to genre by showing a bit of slap and tickle and a few naked women (where would this kind of comedy be without this kind of visual honesty), and by showing Wilson and Vaughn having the time of their life as they tromp through Jewish, Protestant and Catholic weddings.

The show takes its turn into the second act when the pair crash a very upmarket wedding being organised by Christopher Walken, playing a high up Washington secretary of Treasury, given to lighting cigars and discoursing on the economy of Paraguay.

The boys manage to hit up a couple of cuties, Walken’s daughters – Wilson falls for Rachel McAdams, very cute indeed, while Vaughn scores her sister, Isla Fisher, who doesn’t mind tying down her partner to the bed and giving him a good servicing. Fisher has fun pretending to be a virgin, and otherwise being devious in her attempts to wind Vaughn up, and naturally Vaughn gets to like it.

The family is of course dysfunctional – McAdams has her doubts about her boyfriend, an Ivy league type who doesn’t mind roughing up anyone who stands in his way when playing a friendly game of football on the vast lawns.There’s a nerdish and perhaps homosexual son, natch, who likes to paint and seems to like men, and a mom (Jane Seymour), who doesn’t mind turning up in the bedroom to ask Wilson to feel up her newly enhanced plastic breasts.

Director David Dobkin grabs a fair amount of laughs through the first two acts. But of course being a romantic comedy, of a kind, there has to be a comeuppance, and the boys have to get serious about their new found loves. The third act is a kind of ‘will they won’t they’ get together, with Wilson finding it hard to land McAdams (no spoilers, but no prizes for guessing how it turns out).

As we get to the sombre part of proceedings – preparing for the wedding crashers heading off to their own weddings – things are lightened a little by Will Ferrell turning up for a cameo as the cold hearted master who invented the whole wedding crasher game, and was the inspiration for the boys. He’s now turned his dark arts to funerals as the perfect place to pick up grieving women (a nice indirect tilt of the hat to Four Weddings and a Funeral), a move which sadly brings Wilson to his senses.

The last act also suffers from some inappropriate staging – again without giving the game away, the usual public declarations that round out this show might have been more funny (certainly more credible) taking place in the wedding reception, the natural home of the wedding crashers, rather than in an actual ceremony itself, but hey by then the show has delivered exceptional rental value, and it’s hard to quibble. All is forgiven, even if the show has turned from laugh along pizza to way too cheesy dominoes type pizza (though as the boys note, any pizza is the go).

It’s nice to see some old comedy faces turn up (it’s good to see Henry Gibson still doing the cameo rounds) and the main cast perform in a very slick way. It’s also good to see writers Steve Faber and Bob Fisher aware of genre rules, and getting away with lots of jokey references to the rules. The pace is generally fast, and proceedings only sag as things have to be rounded up and rounded out. Maybe the show runs a little too long (it's around the 114 minute mark) but at least the team do their best to stuff it with jokes, with the padding only showing in places.

You could do yourself a favor and chill out on a Friday night with this show, and be none the worse for wear the next day. It’s a mind blob kind of thing. Feminists can pretend they’re doing it to study sexism, but it offers no worse social bending than the daughters conspiring together to score the men in Pride and Prejudice. If anything, there’s equal opportunity dissing, with the jock getting to spend time heaving into the toiler, and the nerd getting to rub his fingers over the restrained Vaughn’s lips. Maybe there's nothing quite like the cat pissing in the ashes of the dearly departed, but there's a kindred spirit. Anyway, it made me (and my partner) laugh, and put us in a good mood, and for $2.95 (on special), what more do you want?

Well you could of course want the more uncensored version available elsewhere in the world on DVD – why does Roadshow always do the wrong thing – but maybe that’s being held back for later release. You do get a few deleted scenes, wisely left in the out-takes bin (the 99 luft baloonen is really dire), a behind the scenes featurette of a standard kind, and commentary tracks from the stars (they’re funnier acting) and a more informative one from director Dobkin, plus a few other trinkets. Not a bad package, but it really is just a Friday night show that wants you to laugh, and just wants to please. And only an Australian film maker could find a flaw with that.

 

 Oh, and to answer the opening question - not any more than feces, other bodily fluids, and breasts. Anyone remember the original Pink Panther? I liked comedy better when it was trying to be funny, just funny, not hip, and definetely not edgy. Trying to be hip and/or edgy just means "lets make the whole thing a bunch of overused-but still offensive poop and boob jokes"

J3ph_42, March 10, 2006 7:47

 Yep, old habits die hard, and sexism is a pretty old old one. Movies of this sort are getting really old to me. After American Pie (which I never saw) came out, it seemed like American comedy directors were just in a competition to see how bad a movie they could make and still get a box office cash cow. (Dude where's my car and anything Will Ferrel has done recently are excellent examples) Sometimes I wonder if comedy movie directors hate intelligent people, and are out to make our lives as difficult as possible. Or maybe they were trying to help us, so we could make the equation: if(person.enjoys(Dudewheresmycar) || person.enjoys(americanpie)) {fucktards.Add(person);/*add person to array Fucktards*/ convsersation.end();}

j3ph_42, March 8, 2006 12:02

Get free email now!