Wedding Crashers (2005)

Directed by David Dobkin. Starring Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams, Christopher Walken, Isla Fisher, Bradley Cooper, Jane Seymour, Keir O’Donnell, Ellen Albertini Dow, Will Ferrell, Henry Gibson, Ron Canada. [R]

Wilson and Vaughn turn the practice of crashing weddings into a crass art form, a hedonistic means to dance, carouse, and sleep with women. But then they crash the wedding of the Treasury Secretary’s (Walken) daughter, get roped into a weekend visit to the family’s waterfront property, and Wilson starts falling for one of the other daughters (McAdams). An appealing but not altogether successful combination of crude boys-will-be-boys raunchfest and sentimental rom-com; some sequences and gags are decidedly un-PC, while others would fit right in with a script that Nora Ephron might pen. A surfeit of episodes that lack a payoff and/or a twist on hoary stereotypes (Seymour’s seduction scene, O’Donnell’s sullen gay predator, Dow’s grannies-say-the-darndest-things schtick, etc.), but there are enough good laughs scattered about for a decent romp. Though their relationship is underdeveloped, Wilson and McAdams are a likable pairing; as for Vaughn, his offbeat and rapid-fire deadpan serves him well; Walken, however, is sadly underused and Cooper plays one of those most frustrating of rom-com characters—the über-jerk who stands in the way of the protagonist’s happiness, which only makes the love interest seem like an idiot for not dropping him like a bad habit long before the end (or never getting with him in the first place). But whatever it takes to make someone who starts out as a conniving lout look good, right?

62/100