Crash This Wedding

Rating: 7/10 (31 July 2005)

"The Wedding Crashers" has all the elements of a "Frat Pack" comedy. It stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in the leads, and has a cameo by Will Ferrell near the end of this funny flick. There are plenty of "gross out" jokes that will leave you laughing, if you have this sense of humor. All that is missing is Ben Stiller.
Vaughn and Wilson are John Beckwith and Jeremy Klein, two carefree Washington-based womanizing divorce mediators who meet and bed with young women at every ethnic wedding in town that they aren't invited to - Jewish, Italian, Irish, Indian, etc. Surprisingly, they are the most sought-after guests that women and children take to (in fact, one difficult boy stubbornly demands Jeremy to make a bike out of balloons). These guys lie and cheat their ways at weddings to get the girls they want.
Then it's the big social event of the year. One of the daughters of Treasury Secretary Cleary (Christopher Walken, once again in one of his "eccentric" roles every director demands him to play) and his slinky 50ish wife Kathleen (Jane Seymour, who displays middle-aged sexuality and keeps her modesty, in an implied nude scene with Owen Wilson later on) is getting married. They crash this wedding. Then they are invited by the sisters of the bride, Claire (Rachel McAdams) and Gloria (Isla Fisher) to their Cape Cod house for the weekend. Claire is engaged to hunk Sack, who has such a violent streak he knocks down Jeremy so hard when they play football. But John has a liking for Claire, and then gets her at the end of the movie. Gloria falls for Jeremy. The faithless Kathleen ("Call me Kat") wants John to fondle her breasts. As Kathleen, it would appear that Jane Seymour told the director not to display her breasts, just the top part, and then when it came to the breasts, Owen Wilson would block them with his hands covering them completely. The younger actresses boldly get the full frontal nudity, as in the case of the more comfortable Isla Fisher tying up Vince Vaughn. Also, the Clearys have a brother named Todd (Keir O'Donnell), a gay young man who falls for Jeremy. Then, there is a foul-mouthed grandmother played by Ellen Albertini Dow, the elderly rapster from Adam Sandler's "Wedding Singer" and now in "The Wedding Crasher," providing her comic relief. Ms. Dow is a spunky old lady who loves a riotous wedding.
This is the laugh-riot of the summer. Will Ferrell gives his support as Chaz the funeral crasher who falls for young, crying babes and gets both mushy and horny wherever he goes. Henry Gibson has never lost his deadpan "Laugh-In" style as the reverend for the Clearys' weddings. Wilson, Vaughn, Walken, Seymour, et al, display their talents at what they do best - seductive, eccentric, and very funny in their comic roles. The film is very reminiscent of "There's Something About Mary," which also came out on July 15th seven years before. Both movies have sex, foul language, and dirty jokes throughout. And "The Wedding Crashers" is the biggest and best film of the summer of 2005, where most of the other movies (the needless remakes, for instance) make up a movie junkyard this season, which explains the Hollywood slump.