Wedding Crashers

Even before the film’s opening fade-in, we hear it: the rat-a-tat-tat produced by impeccably timed verbalizations of razor-sharp wit. As the two titular characters observe a disgruntled couple shouting at each other (with remarks like, “Don’t talk to me with your mouth open!”), they must feel the sweet satisfaction of watching their lives’ secret philosophy proven correct. Who needs the burden of marriage when you can simply crash weddings, by picking up single chicks during their most jovial, lovesick, and inebriated hour?

This is precisely the attitude sported by best friends and professional crashers Jeremy and John, played by Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson who demonstrate such spectacular comic chemistry that it quickly emerges as the film’s primary strength. After a vibrant montage showcasing the crashers doing what they do best, there’s a telling moment where Vaughn contemplates his future while sitting next to Wilson on the steps of the Lincoln memorial. “Someday, we’ll look back and laugh at how young and stupid we were,” quips Vaughn, to which Wilson waits a beat and replies, “We’re not all that young.”

Wedding Crashers, directed by David Dobkin and written by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher, shares a similar sentiment with last spring’s comedy Hitch, in which love seems to have become such an uncharted mystery to the oft-divorced American population that maybe date doctors and wedding crashing have become less a comical exaggeration and more a desperate alternative to, you know, regular dating (and judging by both films’ staggering box office receipts, this theory may not be far off).

At first, Crashers looks like it will do nothing but follow Vaughn and Wilson from wedding to crashed wedding, which while funny, would have eventually worn thin. Instead, the friends decide to crash the wedding of the distinguished Senator Cleary’s daughter. Surely enough, each friend finds himself drawn to one of Cleary’s two younger daughters, and thus complications ensue as they follow the daughters to the Cleary mansion. This sounds like the perfect set-up for a classic comedy, and the film does deliver the goods…to a point.

Vaughn and Wilson are never a problem, since it’s virtually impossible to ruin their hilarious rapport; Vaughn’s motor-mouth insights prove a perfect match for Wilson’s deadpan charm (only Wilson could make comic magic with lines like, “Some people say we use only ten percent of our brains. I think we only use ten percent of our hearts.”). Their scenes together are so good that they more than make up for the film’s several flaws, the most glaring one of all being a third act that tries to develop a moral conscience in the midst of a broad, bawdy comedy.

The Cleary family, for the most part, is a dysfunctional mess of quirky caricatures. Isla Fisher comes off the best as Gloria, the youngest of the daughters, who develops a seemingly naïve crush on Vaughn worthy of Fatal Attraction. Unfortunately, Christopher Walken is given practically nothing to do as the Senator, while his wife (Jane Seymour of “Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman”) emerges as a wannabe Mrs. Robinson, his homosexual son (Keir O’Donnell) sulks behind his easel (he paints a nude portrait of Vaughn looking like Adam in the Garden of Eden), and his elderly mother (Ellen Albertini Dow) swears up a storm while brandishing a shotgun.

Some of this is funny, yet too much of it is awkward and unnecessary. The only member of the Cleary family the filmmakers allow to be an actual human being is middle daughter Claire, played by Rachel McAdams in a performance that fully solidifies her as one of America’s most engaging young actresses. After portraying the blonde bully of Mean Girls and the love-struck redhead of The Notebook, her earthy brunette of Crashers becomes the only genuine emotional anchor to guide the audience through the last act’s murky attempts at seriousness. Wilson’s “crasher” would have had no trouble hooking up with McAdams, if the script hadn’t thrown in the clichéd character of the “formidable fiancé” (Bradley Cooper), who is so arrogant and sadistic that he grinds the comedy to a halt. He isn’t funny, and you don’t even like to hate him – you just plain hate him.

This leads to a wince-inducing climax in which an entire church congregation is forced to wait in stilted silence as all the principle characters stand up and sort out their problems. None of this is helped by a last-second cameo by Will Ferrell, whose very appearance reminds the audience of his hilarious Anchorman, which didn’t let its trivial plot get in the way of a consistent stream of laughs. Crashers’ attempt at drama fails because, with the exception of McAdams, none of the characters have been fleshed out enough to deserve an audience that would take them seriously (even the film seems to realize this, with an ending that hints at future crashes). And yet, Crashers still succeeds as a comedy, because the dialogue exchanges between Vaughn and Wilson have a rhythm, timing, and life of their own.

Wedding Crashers won’t win anyone Oscars, but it will hopefully lead to more Vaughn/Wilson pairings, because when they get their verbal “rat-a-tat-tat” underway, there are few funnier sounds to be heard.

Rating: *** (out of *****)