Even funnier than I expected

Rating: 9/10 (12 August 2005)

I'd heard this was a funny movie. I expected it to be funny. But I didn't expect it to be THIS funny! Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn headline a cast in what must be one of the absolute funniest movies I've seen in years. Part of the comic team that started out with "Zoolander" and later the VERY successful "Old School," among others, this is better than both. While movies like those, "Starsky & Hutch," etc. ended up relying quite heavily on the crude and outright disgusting, this movie forgoes much of that in favor of genuine laughs.
Vince Vaughn hearkens back to the over-the-top antics he first displayed in the cult hit "Swingers," while, perhaps for the first time, Wilson manages not to irritate me (okay, I'll admit Wes Anderson knows how to use him too). Together they generate enough laughs to sustain the picture by themselves. But luckily they are given a terrific supporting cast to help them on their way.
As mediators for couples in divorce settlements, they prove their effectiveness in the first scene, where they disturb separated spouses Dwight Yoakam and Rebecca De Mornay to the point that they want to settle just so these two don't have to talk anymore.
These guys do everything together, and they have for the last seventeen years. It is the most homo-erotic relationship between two heterosexual men to be shown in quite some time. The whole movie, they are after women, but it is their bond that holds things together. It has gotten so Jeremy (Vaughn) has promised, in keeping with tradition, never to let John (Wilson) spend his birthday alone, since the only child's parents are dead. And, as the title implies, every year they head to weddings looking for women to bed. They also make quite a scene at every wedding, assisting with the cutting of the cake, and making speeches to the bride and groom.
But then comes the "Kentucky Durby of weddings," Treasury Secretary Cleary (Christopher Walken) is walking his oldest daughter down the aisle. The scene features walk-ons by Sen. John McCain and James Carville. The two buddies go in as "brothers from New Hampshire," and things spiral out of control. John sets his sights for Claire Cleary, (Rachel McAdams), the middle child who is dating a selfish environmental lobbyist (Bradley Cooper, of "Alias" fame). Jeremy, who just wants to stick to the plan of the one-night stand, becomes the object of obsessive deflowered virgin Gloria Cleary (Ilsa Fisher, giving perhaps the most energetic performance of the film), not to mention the secretary's gay son, Todd. Mrs. Cleary (Jane Seymour) attempts to seduce John in a rather humiliating scene reminiscent of "The Graduate." Another hilarious addition is the secretary's foul-mouthed mother, who describes First-Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as being a dyke. Henry Gibson, as the meek Father is also a pleasure, not so much for what he says (since he has very few lines) but what he doesn't say, including listening to Vaughn give confession, ending with a mouth-to-mouth kiss to seal the deal.
Vaughn and Fisher are a perfect romantic pair, because each one is just as crazy as the other, and as determined as she is to screw him, he's just as determined to keep away. Owen Wilson, more subdued than his co-star, actually shows a depth heretofore unseen in his character. Will Ferrell has an uncredited cameo as the entrepreneur who taught Vaughn how to crash weddings, a momma's boy who now gets his kicks crashing funerals.
The references to bodily organs, sex, etc. are all fairly relevant in the context of the story, and not overdone. It's crude, but unlike "Old School," stuff isn't just thrown in there because the writers couldn't think of anything genuinely funny to say.