The Wedding Crashers
The Wedding Crashers makes no apologies for it’s crass, crude behavior. This politically incorrect comedy about two louts who crash weddings to get drunk and have sex with vulnerable women wallows in its conviction to shock and amuse. Let the prudes whine, surely there’s enough room at the local theater to accommodate this bawdy comedy which recalled Bad Santa and Bachelor Party.
John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Klein (Vince Vaughn) are best friends and partners in a small law firm which moderates divorce settlements. Though bachelors, John and Jeremy know more about weddings than most people: they spend three weeks out of the year crashing them, taking on various persona with the hopes of scoring cold drinks, hot food, and even hotter women. No wedding is off limits, making for a hilarious montage where John and Jeremy work the reception halls and bedrooms of various ethnic ceremonies.
Though they’ re heels, there’ s something sympathetic about John and Jeremy, even endearing. As they leap from wedding to wedding, dispensing shovel after shovel of BS to their hosts and prospective notches, we sense there’ s something redeemable in John and Jeremy. All they need is someone to knock sense into them.
Enter Claire (Rachel McAdams, sweet and charming) and Gloria (Isla Fisher, sassy and sexy) Cleary, daughters of Secretary of Treasury William Cleary (Christopher Walken). When John and Jeremy crash a Cleary family wedding, they find themselves swept up in their lie, forced to spend the weekend at the Cleary estate.
Jeremy is mortified. The pretty young redhead he nailed on the beach was Gloria, and being a virgin, has fallen madly in love with the con artist. On the other hand, John is intrigued by Claire, a beautiful young woman engaged to a boorish blue blood, and sees the weekend as an opportunity to win her heart.
The weekend allows the writers, through John and Jeremy, to explore the Cleary family dynamic, an oddball collection of characters who redefine dysfunction. Mother Kathleen (Jane Seymour, extremely unpredictable) wants John to check out her boob job, while son Todd (Keir O’ Donnell) is a sexually repressed artist hot for Jeremy. Don’ t get me started on grandma, whose discussion on noted lesbians would make a carpet cleaner blush.
Director David Dobkin saves The Wedding Crashers from becoming a slob comedy by finding a comfortable balance between silliness and sincerity. The film has a heart, a big one, and Wilson and Vaughn use that heart to pump life into this ribald celebration of friendship and romance.
Ripping Romance A New One
The Wedding Crashers
Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Christopher Walken, Jane Seymour, Will Farrell. Directed by David Dobkin. Rated R. 119 Minutes.
Larsen Rating: $8.00
