Am I missing something?

Rating: 3/10 (19 September 2005)

I have several friends -- educated ones, ones with quantifiably good taste -- who expressed bemusement at THE WEDDING CRASHERS (one went so far as to compare Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson to Hope and Crosby). I suppose I just didn't get it. Was this movie anything but predictable, often offensive (but not edgy) jokes and a banal plot with holes you could drive a Mack truck through? Nothing about the film makes much sense: Wilson and Vaughn's characters work closely together but never seem to communicate once a rift develops between them, for instance, without any kind of explanation; and the cheesy cameo if woefully out of place. It's all just part of the cinema of humiliation (MEET THE FOCKERS, THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, etc.) that has foisted obnoxious and ridiculous situations on men just to make them writhe in discomfort. The only good thing about this movie is that it proves that the best Ben Stiller movie is one that doesn't have Ben Stiller in it.