The idea of a couple of middle-aged single men who crash wedding receptions in order to meet single women basking in the glow of matrimonial bliss is a funny idea that's carried out, and then some, in the raunchy comedy Wedding Crashers.
Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play a pair of lifelong friends and Washington, D.C., divorce mediators.
Perhaps because their business revolves around the messier moments at the ends of marriages, the pastime for Wilson's John and Vaughn's Jeremy is crashing weddings. They even have concocted elaborate rules for their sport.
Never as funny as it hopes to be, Wedding Crashers could have existed as a one-joke idea, which it pretty much is for its whirligig spin of a first half hour.
In a dizzying round of weddings and receptions, the guys zip through Jewish, Irish, Italian, Chinese and Hindu weddings. They always use assumed names and professions. They invent relationships to the bride or groom's families to account for their presence.
No one ever questions them, especially since they inevitably become the life of the party.
It's a merry round as they chow down, dance wildly with old ladies and children, offer toasts to the bride and groom, present fake emotions and offer made-up war stories to win sympathy and the attentions of the prettiest wedding guests, who almost always wind up naked in bed with one of the guys.
All this cheerful wackiness can only go so far, however. And sensing that they'd carried the film's one joke as far as it could go, writers Steve Faber and Bob Fisher came up with a plot that turns out to be a sort of reworking of Meet the Parents.
At the wedding-of-the-year reception for the daughter of U.S. Treasury Secretary William Cleary (Christopher Walken), John is immediately taken with the classic beauty and smartness of his unmarried daughter Claire Cleary (Rachel McAdams). Meanwhile, Jeremy finds himself taken by her sister Gloria (Isla Fisher), a bouncy "clinger" as Jeremy calls her.
As Jeremy attempts to get Gloria's grabby clutches off him, John is increasingly drawn to Claire.
She's dazzled by John's ability, from years of wedding reception experience, to figure out just what's inside every wrapped wedding gift package. Before long, much to Jeremy's displeasure, John has accepted a weekend invitation for them both to the Cleary estate in Maryland.
Our heroes soon find themselves in one giant muddle of a dysfunctional family, what with Walken's Papa Cleary casting a jaundiced eye at his houseguests, Claire's jock boyfriend Sack (Bradley Cooper of Alias) taking lowball aim at John for his attentions to Claire, Gloria's grasping hands-on approach to Jeremy, unsubtle overtures by the unhappily married Mrs. Cleary (Jane Seymour) to John, unsubtle overtures by the gay son (Keir O'Donnell) to Jeremy, and the off-the-cuff declarations of Grandma Cleary (Ellen Albertini Dow), who feels she has earned the right to blurt out insensitively blunt comments because she is old.
Some of this is outrageously amusing. There's also a strong chemistry between Wilson and the sweetly genuine McAdams that makes their tentative romance seem like the "right thing," even though Wilson's John is trying to steal Claire from her handsomer-than-Wilson boyfriend Sack.
Sack is eventually painted as a skunk so we won't feel sympathy for him.
Yet some of the gags staged by director David Dobkins (Shanghai Knights) fall flat. We've seen the oversexed mother before in American Pie, although Seymour cuts a passionate figure.
A grope under the table at a fancy dinner party is supposed to be a comic highlight, but looks like a desperate attempt for a cheap laugh.
An attempted late-night seduction of Jeremy by the Cleary's gay son -- an artist who attends the Rhode Island School of Design! -- is awkward and ultimately icky.
And Will Ferrell, in an unbilled cameo as Jeremy's wedding-crasher mentor, almost immediately overstays his welcome.
Despite all that, the overall tone of Wedding Crashers is merry.
Vaughn and Wilson, although over-the-hill for the kinds of schoolboyish pranks they pull, play off each other well for laughs and win us over in the process.
Vaughn, with his mile-a-second delivery, steals the film from the shuffling, drawling Wilson. There are worse things you might crash than Wedding Crashers.
***
Wedding Crashers
Starring: Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Christopher Walken, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Jane Seymour, Bradley Cooper.
Rated: R, contains sex, nudity, profanity, violence, adult themes.
ARTICLE TOOLS: 
