Portraying a pair of divorce mediators who aren't related, but just appear to be, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn make the most of their likeable nature in Wedding Crashers, a funny, yet inconsistent variation on the raunchy R-rated movies that were so prevalent in the 1980s.
John Beckwith (Wilson) and Jeremy Klein (Vaughn) are fun-loving, good-natured guys who have a desire to treat the summertime season of weddings as a kind of sport, where they show up uninvited to the events and proceed to enjoy themselves at the expense of others. Oh yeah, and they also use the occasions as a chance to sleep with as many horny bridesmaids as possible. A well-edited montage in the movie displays the wide range of weddings the two are willing to crash in order to have a good time.
In the hands of lesser actors, these characters would be insufferable louts that you could scarcely stand to spend five minutes with, let alone two hours. But both Wilson and Vaughn have experience playing these kind of immature characters, who seem content to put off true adulthood as long as possible. They make John and Jeremy at least not quite as sleazy as they maybe read on the page.
But a wedding involving the daughter of U.S. Treasury Secretary Cleary (Christopher Walken) proves a turning point for both of the men, involving the pursuit of his two other daughters. John becomes smitten with Claire (Rachel McAdams), while Jeremy, after a sexual encounter on the beach with Gloria (Isla Fisher), finds himself desperate to get away from her.
"I've got a stage five clinger," Jeremy desperately tells John, who responds by having the two accept an invitation to the Cleary family summer home. John sees this as a chance to get to know Claire better, only to discover her testosterone-fueled boyfriend (Bradley Cooper) waiting for them at the house. Jeremy simply believes he's going to have to suffer a little to help out his friend. Just how much Jeremy has to go through at the home provides most of the laughs in the film's second act.
Article comments
1 - Rob
I enjoyed this movie, but I did think it was about 20 minutes too long. The whole Funeral Crashing scene wasn't necessary. Still worth watching though.