Cute, crude, and largely illogical . . .

Rating: 5/10 (26 July 2005)

'Wedding Crashers' is not the sort of flick I take in very often - I am not a great a fan of crude, gross-out, low-brow humour.
This movie did have some very funny moments, especially when Vince Vaughn's Jeremy character goes off on a tangent.
The premise is interesting at best - confirmed bachelors & divorce arbitrators seeking female 'companionship' at weddings, only to avoid commitment in any form.
Of course the flick could not just be the crashing of weddings, so it evolves (sort of) into a romantic comedy where-in both our leads find true love.
The problem I had with the movie was the lack of logic displayed at various times: Distant relatives of the Secretary of the Treasury are invited to his house by the shore without their bona fides being confirmed. In reality they'd have been thoroughly vetted before getting within 20 meters of a cabinet secretary and presidential candidate.
The hot-to-trot mature mother comes on to one of the leads, presents herself in a state of semi-undress, and then . . . disappears from the plot.
This could have been an up-dated 'Mrs. Robinson' theme, and used as a bedroom farce, with people chasing other people around the house in the dead of night, but once she's had her kit off in John's presence, she fades into the back-ground.
The boyfriend, Sack, is a total, vicious psychopath, but nobody seems to notice it but our leads, and the audience. When Sack SHOOTS Jeremy, no police are called, no doctor is summoned to administer to Jeremy (nutty Gloria is chosen to extract the shot from Jeremy's behind!), and Jeremy is sitting normally within minutes. The entire hunting scene is merely gratuitous violence coupled with an incomplete thought process.
The gay son's character was totally wasted. Todd makes it plain he feels alienated from his otherwise politically correct family, and that could have been used to the advantage of one of the leads.
Just as John dances with flower girls at wedding receptions to gain favour with the admiring single women in attendance, he could have befriended Todd to display his sensitivity to Clare. Instead Todd is used as a gay cliché, climbing on top of the already trussed and helpless Jeremy.
John's drunken wedding-crashing rampage after the rejection by Clare is somewhat, if not totally, out of character. The boozing, brooding rejected boyfriend thing has been done to death.
Perhaps most perplexing is hypocritical reactions both leads display when informed their partner is in love or getting married. Jeremy rejects John's feelings at breakfast at the house by the shore; when Jeremy announces his engagement to Gloria, John insults Jeremy and tells him in no uncertain terms to leave.
If John had a shred of the intellect he'd displayed over and over again, he would have known the Jeremy - Gloria wedding activities would have given him the opportunity to get close to Clare.
Instead he looks up perennial loser and funeral crasher Chas . . .
Some of the stuff was funny, but much was just plain old ludicrous.