satisfactory romantic comedy, brings its laughs, and its predictability in tow

Rating: 6/10 (28 July 2005)

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, the stars bringing this vehicle to theaters (there are other notables in the case, but not with the kind of draw of these two), are very talented, and usually pretty amusing. Wilson, for my money, is the subtler of the two, and is more of the leading man, while Vaughn is usually over-the-top in his double-talk, and garners some laughs even when some fall flat. They take the film Wedding Crashers and make it watchable, along with some supporting actors playing strange characters. It's not as wild as one might expect from the trailers, and as a 'date' movie it's rather predictable.
The opening twenty minutes is close to genius, by introducing the audience into this care-free, inspired montage of Wilson and Vaughn crashing the weddings, enjoying the celebrations, and going to bed with many women. It's not laugh out loud funny, but it garners a few small laughs, and it a very good set-up for what seems to be a film in this vein. It's not quite the case- we get a story that sort of goes on auto-pilot (to put it another way, I've seen a story like this many times over in mainstream romantic comedies) wherein Vaughn gets dragged into staying for a day with the daughter (Isla Fisher, perhaps the best overall funny performance) of the Secretary of Treasury (Christopher Walken, of all people), and Wilson goes along as he tries to woo another daughter (Rachel McAdams, a beauty no doubt) who is already in a relationship with a alpha-male guy (Bradley Cooper). This is when formula takes over.
While the laughs are there, including a crazy dinner scene (it's like a 30's screwball comedy crossed with American Pie for this scene, one of the funniest), a demented quasi-rape of Vaughn on his first night at the Clearys, and some other amusing parts sprinkled throughout the film, there are flaws. For one, it does go a little longer than it should- a couple of scenes could've been cut, or at least trimmed. At two hours, a romp of a romantic comedy shouldn't feel this over-long (a lot of it for the story of Wilson and McAdams' characters, who have good chemistry, but don't have much room to go in the formula). Another problem is under-developed, or non-developed characters.
Take the character Cooper plays, Sack- he's been with Claire (McAdams) for over three years, and yet she is everything that he isn't. He's a one-dimensional villain, someone who is so obvious that it doesn't leave much room for conflict or second guessing about where the film will go. This goes for the Walken character as well, who seems mis-cast in a film where his odd comic genius and timing could come in well, but he doesn't bring much to the table aside from maybe one laugh (perhaps not intentional). Ironically, two characters who score a lot of points when they appear on screen, Will Ferrel as the Wedding Crasher legend Chaz, and Keir O'Donnell as the closet-freak/brother Todd, get very little time to bring funnier bits (they're stuck, again, in the traction of the screenplay, who do what they can in the time given).
Wedding Crashers did give a couple of surprises, and it is gleeful, dumb fun for most of the way. But when it comes to the last quarter it starts to drag, the laughs become more diminished, and it becomes more of waiting for the last scene than being entertained. The whole aspect of the lying theme of the film fits in, yet really as story devices. In short, it's a film that brings in its moments well, and gives some good room for Wilson and Vaughn to work in (Vaughn, whom I've always gotten the least of laughs in the pack of Wilsons, Ferrell, and Stiller in their films, actually makes good on a lot of the set-ups and pay-offs of the absurdities). But the script and actors tend to stumble as much as they make it entertaining. 6/10 or a B-