Wedding Crashers (2005)

Originally Reviewed 

Sunday January 8, 2006

Funniest Movie Of The Year!

That's what everyone's saying about Wedding Crashers, which isn't saying much for the other comedies this year [speaking of 2006], if any other comedies existed. It's like stating you’re the best man for the job when you’re the only one who applied! Wedding Crashers is funny... sometimes but in no way deserves the praise it's receiving.

John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) work together and have been friends since they were kids. Every year when spring rolls around (the biggest wedding season) they go out crashing weddings, pretending to be part of the family with the sole goal of picking up hot chicks for one night stands. As crashers they are quite successful until they try and pull off their biggest crash by attending the wedding of Treasury Secretary William Cleary's (Christopher Walken) daughter. John ends up meeting Claire (Rachel McAdams), Cleary's other daughter and falls in love with her instantly (who wouldn't). Jeremy picks out a pretty red head, who also happens to be one of Cleary's daughters’s, only she ends up being a little psycho and tells Jeremy that they're going to be together forever!

John instantly feels a connection with Claire but finds out she's got a boyfriend.  Gloria (Jeremy's nutcase catch) invites them all over to her house, Jeremy wants nothing more to do with her, but John still feels he has a chance with Claire. The rest of the story sees John and Claire growing closer, while a jealous boyfriend gets even and figures out John and Jeremy's true identities, blowing their cover wide open and John's chance with Claire.

At times this film was funny, at times it was boring, as a whole it was way too long for a comedy. There were so many pointless scenes in this film that could have been cut out to make a much shorter and well rounded film at a solid 90 minutes, but past that point I was beginning to wonder when this film was going to end! Some of the characters like Jane Seymour and Will Ferrell had no purpose in the grand scheme of things whatsoever, they could have both been cut out and nothing would have been missed. All Ferrell adds in his five minutes on screen is about half the film's expletives, nothing more.

As for acting, Owen Wilson and of course Rachel McAdams give the best performances. I found their story to be the most enjoyable, and would have rather seen more of that than most of the Vince Vaughn scenes, who annoyed me most of the film with his constant rambling (as he always does). Christopher Walken wasn't that great either, he was far from his usual campy persona and was mostly dry and boring. The main problem is Wilson and Vaughn are sidekicks, they aren't very entertaining unless they have someone funnier than they are leading the way, such as the usual Ben Stiller or Jackie Chan combinations, without their usual teammates these two simply aren't as entertaining, its like watching Andy Griffin without Barney Fife.

Overall I found Wedding Crashers to be alright, the Wilson and McAdams scenes were my favorite, the film dragged on way too long and never accomplished much for all the time it spent. It easily could have had 30 minutes cut and nothing would have been missed, I'm almost scared to think about how long the uncut version must be and what kind of crap they actually did cut that's thrown in there! Comedies should not be this long, because the average comedy plot line is so thin that after about an hour everything begins to grow old. In the end it was Rachel McAdams lovely smile that helped get me through the end of this drugged out crash. 

5/10