Below the Belt Inside the Beltway

Rating: 6/10 (6 September 2005)

(I don't know if revealing a surprise cast member is considered a spoiler) "Wedding Crashers" isn't great cinema, but for what it is, I felt that I had gotten my $9 worth. The plot is not complicated. Two divorce mediators(Vince Vaughan and Owen Wilson) who live in the DC area make a hobby of crashing weddings to take advantage of free food, free booze and most importantly, young women who dispense sexual favors freely. Predictably, Wilson's character falls hard for a girl at one especially posh event celebrating the nuptials of her sister. The girls are daughters of a Kerryesque senator played by Chritopher Walken. Vince Vaughan's character becomes entangled with a third sister.According to the credits, John McCain and James Carville have bit parts playing themselves, to add realism, I suppose. I missed them, and in any case realism is a term to use advisedly in a film where a little old lady cusses like a muleskinner, the senator's horny wife(Jane Seymour) traps Owen Wilson in a bedroom demanding he feel her newly-overhauled breasts, and Vince Vaughan's mentor, a silly character named Chaz Reingold(surprise cast member Will Farrell) is reduced to picking up babes at funerals. For the most part the ending is predictable, though there a few surprise turns. But since the movie is to some extent a romantic comedy, and they generally have happy endings, who cares? The controversial purple heart scene, if it's any consolation consistsofVince Vaughan merely showing Owen Wilson the medals for a few seconds and explaining how they will be used to get free drinks at a cash bar event. They don't actually show them being used, so we don't know if they are. Perhaps there existed such a scene and it was cut and will resurface when "Wedding Crashers" comes out on DVD. Owen Wilson's rival for the affections of the senator's daughterisn evil preppiemuch like generations of other preppies with no redeeming virtues in generations of earlier comedies. There are other parallels. In "Caddyshack" you have to accept a world of animatronic gophers. In this film you have to accept a man getting a handjob under a table(through his clothes yet) In one scene, one of John Beckwith's(Owen Wilson's) conquests,whose name he has forgotten, gets up from bed and asks "Are you completely full of s--t or just half?" His remorseful response is that he was hoping just half, but he doesn't know. That's kind of the way the whole film is, though there is a tipoff that true love may win out or at least be a contender in the opening scenes when the boys are dealing with a sniping couple(Dwight Yoakum and Rebecca DeMornay) who are fighting over frequent flier miles. I recommend this movie only with reservations for anybody under 16, and don't recommend it for children under 12 at all. There is nonstop filthy language, the aforementioned handjob and a bondagescene. And Owen Wilson gets beat up rather badly in a dirty fight. The nudity is brief, and mostly of girls. Very little of Wilson and Vaughan's flesh is seen. From their viewpoint, I suppose that this is one of the advantages of being the big stars that they now are.