Wedding Crashers (2005)

I'd be lying if I said I went into this with a lot of optimism. Even to the untrained eye this appears to be nothing more than another film cashing in on the Frat Pack's popularity at the moment. It seems the fine folks in Hollywood are squeezing the Vaughn/Wilson/Wilson/Stiller/Ferrell (especially Ferrell) fruit for every last molecule of juice they can get. I, for one, am getting a little tired of these guys. But my bias aside, they don't make horrible movies. OK, sometimes they do, but for the most part these things are fairly entertaining, light hearted romps that probably won't have much staying power down the road, but are good distractions for a chill night in.

Anyways, personal bias aside, "Wedding Crashers" is just as I said. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but it isn't fall on the floor funny or terribly original either. Two best friends (Vaughn and O. Wilson) are avid wedding crashers. Why? Free food, a great party, and the knowledge and charisma to score ridiculously good looking women at weddings via a montage sequence set to... I forget the song at the moment, but you get it. After "the season" ends, one more potentially juicy score rears its head and the pair can't resist. True to standard screen writing conventions, something goes wrong when Wilson falls in love, which is against the rules, apparently.

This story arc is what drives the movie, but the relationship between Wilson and Rachel McAdams is neither funny nor intriguing. That gap is filled admirably by the supporting arc between Vaughn and the crazy Gloria Cleary, played by Isla Fisher. Wait, not admirably - barely. That's it; barely by Vaughn and Fisher. Off shoots or marginally funny moments with the rest of the Clearly clan add some giggles to the film, but even Christopher Walken can't save the picture when everything falls apart in the third act, both literally and figuratively. Throw in an obligatory Will Ferrell cameo and there you have it. It's another movie fresh of the assembly line. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but this group of guys have done better and it just seems that they're running on fumes right now. So let's appreciate it for what it is and move on.

Grade = C