Wedding Crashers is no Old School

Rating: 3/10 (17 July 2005)

I was pretty psyched to see "Wedding Crashers" After all I'm a big fan of Vince Vaughn and I really liked "Old School". But this flick was so badly made that I found myself counting the minutes until the credits. At best I chuckled 4 or 5 times. Even the supposedly "outrageous" scenes were not that funny and really poorly done. Every plot turn was so predictable. I mean I feel like I've seen this type of movie a million times. How many times have you seen a screwball comedy where the guy courts the girl under false pretenses only to get caught being somebody that he's not. So then of course the girl gets really mad and completely blows him off. But he falls so deeply in love with the girl that he realizes he just needs to be himself with her and she'll fall in love with him and everybody will live happily ever after. Mind you this part of the plot takes up more than an hour of the film. The best thing about this movie is Rachel McAdams. She's actually a very good actress and she's absolutely gorgeous. But even she couldn't stop me from cringing during some of her "falling in love" scenes with Owen Wilson. Vince Vaughn's performance is good but the material is so bland that the fact that he can still make you chuckle is a testament to his talent as a comedic actor. The first 15-20 minutes of this movie, the actual wedding crashing is the best part. You may recall the wedding and reception scenes at the beginning of "Old School". Vince Vaughn steals those scenes and is hilarious. So I guess someone decided to make an entire movie with Vince Vaughn doing his Vince Vaughn thing at weddings. That's how "Wedding Crashers" got a green light. This film gets bad when it becomes a very predictable love story with Owen Wilson playing the sad sack. All right.. I'm done writing about this flick. I'm gonna watch my "Old School" DVD to cheer me up now.