hit-and-miss comedy

Rating: 6/10 (13 May 2006)

John Beckwith and Jeremy Grey have come up with a full-proof scheme to get women to sleep with them: they go to weddings of total strangers, pass themselves off as distant relatives of either the bride or the groom, charm the living daylights out of the other guests, then put the make on any pretty young thing that happens to come their way. And up till now, John and Jeremy have been able to pull off their little ruse pretty much without a hitch - until, that is, the day they decide to crash the wedding of the daughter of the Treasury Secretary of the United States. Then all hell breaks loose "The Wedding Crashers" is a comedy vehicle built for speed. The dialogue comes so fast and furious that it's occasionally hard to absorb everything the characters are saying. David Dobkin has followed suit in his direction, keeping the film going full-throttle at all points. That's the good news about "The Wedding Crashers." The bad news is that, as the movie goes on, the jokes and setups have a tendency to become a trifle strained, forced and labored, and the laughs begin to diminish as a result. It's not that there aren't some very funny moments in "The Wedding Crashers," just that there aren't nearly as many as there should be.
As the two party crashers, Owen Wilson takes the role of the smooth-talking romantic lead, while Vince Vaughn gets to be the cynical victim of circumstances that such buddy comedies seem to require. Both are very good, but Vaughn, in particular, hits all the right notes as a man who finally meets his match with a girl (charmingly played by Isla Fisher) who has no intention of letting him get away from her after just a one night stand. Rachel McAdams, Christopher Walken, Jane Seymour, Rebecca De Mornay, Dwight Yoakam, Henry Gibson and Ellen Albertini Dow - who, apparently, needs to make an appearance in any movie that has the word "wedding" in its title - round out the cast. And, ah yes, there is a fairly large, albeit uncredited, cameo appearance by none other than Will Ferrell late in the film.
This is no bell-ringer of a comedy, to be sure, but it is at least harmless and watchable.