Recently there's cropped up a group of actors appearing in a variety of comedies, including Luke and Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller. The list of movies where some or all of these actors appear is impressive, containing: Zoolander, Old School, Starsky & Hutch, Anchorman, and Dodgeball. And the odd thing is that in each of these movies the actors freely swap out who's the star and who plays the supporting character or just makes a cameo appearance. This time around, in Wedding Crashers, it is Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn's turn to star and it is Ferrell who makes the cameo appearance. The one constant in all of those movies, including this one, is that they are consistently hilarious.
Wilson and Vaughn play John and Jeremy, two divorce mediators whose hobby is crashing weddings and picking up women so besotted by the romance of the ceremony that they'll sleep with anyone. But after years of doing this, John is getting tired and at the biggest wedding of the season, breaks one of the many Wedding Crasher rules by falling in love with Claire; one of the bridesmaids. Jeremy, meanwhile, has slept with Gloria, another bridesmaid, who to his absolute horror, seems to fall in love with him. When the two bridesmaids (they're sisters) invite John and Jeremy to their father's lakeshore home, John jumps at the idea, while Jeremy only agrees to go because one of the Wedding Crasher rules is: never leave a crasher behind.
While the whole movie is funny, it is the first act that is the funniest. Once John and Jeremy become ensconced in the family house, despite a hilarious turn by Vaughn and Isla Fisher as the psychotic bridesmaid, the movie really turns into a conventional romantic comedy. Claire is already engaged to someone else and he turns out to be an arrogant jerk, but naturally she's falling for John, who has of course lied to her, a fact that you just know is going to come out at some point, and so on and so on until your standard romantic comedy ending. It stays funny until the end, but that's despite the clichéd storyline rather than because of it, although the ending is given a boost of humor when Ferrell shows up for his eleventh-hour cameo.
Of the two stars, Vaughn definitely gets the funnier lines, reducing Wilson almost to the role of straight man. Isla Fisher though, manages to steal every scene that she's in, away from both of them. As for McAdams, she plays the beautiful, smart girl (who for some reason is always dating the wrong guy) well enough, but is left only the scraps of humor.
Perhaps the most refreshing thing about this movie is simply the fact that it's rated R. For once a movie didn't cut the corners needed to get a PG-13 rating and still contains a bit of an edge. There's foul language, brief nudity and sex. 20 years ago that was practically the norm in comedies, but today it's far too rare a thing.
