An engaging romantic comedy.

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2019)

Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn make a good team as John and Jeremy, two serial womanizers who regularly crash weddings to pick up girls. This has been their tradition for a while, but things go awry when they crash the wedding of the eldest daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury (Christopher Walken). John finds himself falling hard for Claire, daughter # 2 (a radiant Rachel McAdams), and Jeremy gets targeted by Gloria, daughter # 3 (Isla Fisher), a "stage five clinger" who develops a serious infatuation with him.
Overall, "Wedding Crashers" is a fun, if overlong, movie that delivers enough good laughs to keep it watchable. Some of the humour is of course pretty raunchy, and some of the dialogue rather colourful, but there are some amusing moments. Glorias' late-night bout of kinkiness is a good example.
John and Jeremy are characters who might have run the risk of coming off as incredibly sleazy, but Wilson and Vaughn never overdo it, and their amiability does go a long way. But the real value of "Wedding Crashers" is that it offers good comic opportunities for many cast members. Walken is effective, sometimes edging into typical Walken-esque eccentricities, but also making sure to project some actual sense of authority and intimidation. The gorgeous McAdams is ideal, and it's not hard to see why the John character would be so taken with her. Fisher is hilarious as the seemingly unhinged, spoiled-rotten Gloria.
Bradley Cooper, a few years before "The Hangover", portrays the arrogant rich jerk who's actually been dating Claire, and the fact that she clearly shouldn't be with him is obvious from the get-go. Jane Seymour is a hoot as Walkens' hot-to-trot wife. Ellen Albertini Dow is fun as his cranky, foul-mouthed mother. And Ron Canada, as the butler, gets to deliver some priceless lines. Dwight Yoakam and Rebecca DeMornay have cameo roles in the opening minutes; there's also a special (unbilled) guest star who pops up towards the end of the movie.
"Wedding Crashers" is ultimately plenty predictable, but getting to the end is still a reasonably good time, and there's enough emotional content to keep things on a fairly even keel.
Seven out of 10.