A Crashing Bore...

Rating: Null/10 (3 July 2006)

Wedding Crashers' storyline immediately tells you that what you are about to see isn't going to touch the heights of sophistication - it's a film about guys who crash weddings in order to get off with any hot chicks that might be available - so only the most naive of viewers would expect anything other than a lowbrow farce filled with its share of crude and sexist jokes. On this score, Wedding Crashers delivers everything you expect from it - but on all other counts it fails miserably.
The chief aim of any comedy, however, is to make its audience laugh, and any comedy that fails to do so must ultimately be considered a total failure. This film barely raised a smile. It never even came close to creating any genuine laughter - just an occasional bemused smile when it rehashed some lame gag that was only mildly funny when it first appeared in Porky's or Pinball Summer or some other eighties teen sex-pic. There's no two ways about it - this film stinks. The only thing it has going for it is a small measure of chemistry between its two male stars and the fact that it is technically competent.
Its bad points are many. The plot is entirely predictable and a good thirty minutes too long. The male leads are unsympathetic boors completely undeserving of any audience goodwill, even after their respective moments of so-called redemption, while the females they end up with are badly written and completely unbelievable. Christopher Walken and Jane Seymour are completely wasted in hopelessly underwritten roles, while other characters simply flit in and out of the action with such inconsistency that you get the impression that large amounts of their screen time was sacrificed to the editor's scissors in an attempt to shorten the running time.
Bottom line: a big, lumbering mess that should be avoided by anyone with a fully-developed sense of humour.