WEDDING CRASHERS Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
New Line Cinema
Grade: A-
Directed by: David Dobkin
Written by: Steve Faber, Bob Fisher
Cast: Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams
Screened at: Loews E-Walk, NYC, 7/7/05 What’s the best way for a guy to meet women? The bar scene? Maybe, but you have to have the meat-market temperament and besides, you never know which women are looking only for one-night stands (alas). Speed-dating? A new way for the genders to join, the men spending one to three minutes talking to the women, then switching chairs to talk to the next. Then again you see people only at their best. Internet? The worst choice of all. The hour-glass shaped body on the feminine end of the messenging might like long walks on the beach but could look–maybe act–like Aileen Wuornos. John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and his best friend and associate Jeremy Klein (Vince Vaughn) have a better idea, one which leads them literally to eat their cake and have it too. They dress to the nines and crash weddings, enabling them not only to partake of the free bar and cocktail franks but, more important, to dance with and hopefully seduce the women. Weddings, they figure, are an aphrodisiac. The ceremony, the band, the booze, all put everyone in a romantic mood, ready to overlook minor mishaps in all departments. Not only do John and Jeremy have a great time wherever they go on the bridal circuit: they give us in the theater audience enough vicarious experiences to call “Wedding Crashers” the best comedy since Jay Roach’s year 2000 hit “Meet the Parents.” Most people rubberneck at the sight of a wedding party leaving the church, the bride and groom getting into the block-long town car, following an institution that at one time lasted until death they do part. John and Jeremy up the ante quite a bit, and they’re nothing if not cultural relativists. The two divorce mediators–shown in dramatic operation as the movie opens–will don yarmelkas and hora with the best of them; join in the obligatory rendition of “Shout,” do the jig at an Irish bash and even partake of the samosas and pakoras at Indian nuptials–both always claiming to be related to “Uncle Ned” and the like. The rules are: the two best friends always go together, leave at the same time, and the old saw, never fall in love. They get in over their heads at the “Kentucky Derby” of weddings, one in which a daughter of Secretary of the Treasury Cleary (Christopher Walken) ties the knot. So much are they the life of the party that they’re invited to the Cleary estate (filmed by Julio Macat on Maryland’s East Coast standing in for Cape Cod), where Jeremy meets and seduces the free-spriited daughter of the politician, Gloria Cleary (Isla Fisher) while John falls hard for the big man’s third daughter, Claire Cleary (Rachel McAdams). When you throw in the shenanigans of Claire’s fiancé, the blue-blooded but, when goaded, vulgar Sack Lodge (Bradley Cooper), you have the makings of a political roast of the Kennedy clan. But director David Dobkin, directing Steve Faber and Bob Fisher’s script at a fast clip throughout, settles for sit-com rather than rather than satire. Given the incredible chemistry of the two best friends, whose alliance could be threatened by wedding bells of their own, “Wedding Crashers” yields a laugh a minute, some from subtleties–as when the effervescent Gloria ties Jeremy to the bedpost while he’s asleep, later discovered by Secretary Cleary who seems clueless about Jeremy’s plight and twists the ropes as though he were checking out the parts of his yacht. If Owen Wilson plays the straight man, at least relative to the more flamboyant Vince Vaughn, then the lovely Rachel McAdams–who has second thoughts about marrying the offensive Sack Lodge–plays straight woman to Isla Fisher’s comically obsessive Gloria. If the two-hour pic could be shortened at all, the wisest move would have been to cut a funeral scene that introduces an uncredited comedian to the proceedings. We could have done without the stereotypical grandma Cleary (Ellen Albertini Dow), who calls Eleanor Roosevelt a dyke, and more could have been done with the alcoholic and unfaithful wife of the Secretary, Jane Seymour in the role of Kathleen Cleary. Minor cavils aside, “Wedding Crashers” is this year’s “Meet the Parents,” poking fun at a cabinet member rather than a former C.I.A. operative and bringing out the best of its two wonderful stars. Rated R. 119 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
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