The cast is great, the movie good

Rating: 7/10 (31 December 2006)

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn sure know how to have fun. They seem to bounce off of each other with ease and pleasure, milking each scene for all it's worth. That pleasure is contagious in this movie, a buddy comedy that turns into a romantic comedy with a little bit of drama mixed in and a pinch of Will Ferrell to spice things up in the last act- all of which blends together quite nicely, which really is no surprise at all considering the talent involved.
Vaughn and Wilson are marriage counselors (how these characters ever got into this field of work is beyond me- beyond them too, probably) who spend a few months each year crashing weddings (i.e. attending weddings without invitation and singling out a young woman, one for each man, for a night of "fun"; after all, women are more prone to give in to a charming man in light of the passions brought about by weddings, and the two men don't see any harm in taking advantage of this). Their characters, Jeremy Grey and John Beckwith respectively, are so serious about wedding crashing that they have a whole list of rules and a specific season in which they can crash. Unfortunately for the two of them, at a wedding late in the season, both of them end up involved with girls they can't seem to get away from.
And this is where the romantic comedy comes into play. Until this point, all the funny came from the banter back and forth between Wilson and Vaughn (who, by the way, should form their own improv duo), but Isla Fisher steals every scene she's in as a sex-obsessed daughter of a government official (Christopher Walken) who has her heart (and body) set on Jeremy. This is a case where going over the top was exactly what was needed, and Isla Fisher delivers with gusto. Rachel McAdams has a plainer and less flashy role as Fisher's sister and, coincidentally, the woman that steals Owen Wilson's heart right out from under him, but she, as usual, is still quite good. Will Ferrell makes a cameo appearance near the end as the man that invented wedding crashing, and his performance deserves to be seen for how terribly wrong it is and yet how funny it still manages to be.
The cast is better than the movie though, which is not an entirely bad thing. Instead of weighing us down with a deep message about the power of love and love conquering all, Wedding Crashers lets its actors run wild. Though it's not without its morals- it celebrates having fun and political incorrectness, but it also has an understanding of a person's limits and responsibilities to himself and those he cares about. But really, a movie like this is just a playground for the talent involved. And boy is it fun to watch them play.