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Film Review

A perfect union

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson seem made for comedy and each other in Wedding Crashers, a film sure to leave viewers chuckling happily ever after.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published July 14, 2005

	[Photo: New Line Cinema
	Joining the wedding celebration without knowing a soul, Jeremy (Vince Vaughn, left) and John (Owen Wilson) don’t care; they’re there to romance the bridesmaids in Wedding Crashers.
	Coming to a darkened room near you Some things old, a handful new, some borrowed plots and a bit of boo: Summer films again marry the proven and the preposterous to lure fans to the movie theater. (5/19/05)

You know a movie has the audience in its pocket when an entire scene's dialogue gets drowned out by laughter, literally more than a minute of mass glee.

It's rare, but it happened with Ben Stiller's zipper troubles in There's Something About Mary, and again at a recent screening of Wedding Crashers, for the same kinds of raunchy reasons.

Describing what goes on would be unfair, but suffice it to say that any dinner party hosted from now on will likely bring back memories of David Dobkin's mostly hilarious movie. The same goes for any wedding reception, touch football game and funeral in your future. I have a feeling that Wedding Crashers is destined to inspire a lot of bad behavior, as good comedies often do.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play Jeremy and John, a pair of oversexed divorce arbiters - their introductory scene is a hoot - who spend weekends sneaking into strangers' weddings and receptions. They've turned rudeness into a strategic art, memorizing rules of ingratiating themselves with people on their way to the bridesmaids. Rules such as No. 32: Don't lay claim to a relative unless you're positive they have a pulse. They can sense a throbbing libido a mile away, and will lie, steal or make balloon animals for children to capture it.

Love is the last thing on their minds until John spots Claire Clearly (Rachel McAdams) at her sister's wedding and is smitten. She's the daughter of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury William Cleary (Christopher Walken), engaged to priggish heir Sack Lodge (Bradley Cooper). Jeremy hooks up with her sister Gloria (Isla Fisher), who's a little too eager to confess her virginity. Jeremy wants to escape, and John wants to stay, a conflict that explodes when they're invited to a family weekend under false pretenses.

The dialogue is sharp, and the audacity level is off the chart. John and Jeremy's various schemes are inspired and briskly detailed by Dobkin until the story settles into John and Claire's romantic obstacles, which are sweeter than the rest of the humor. The entire project rests on Vaughn and Wilson, who together create the kind of comedic chemistry Ben Stiller failed to find with each separately.

Vaughn's performance opposite Stiller in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story prompted me to call it the best Bill Murray movie ever that Murray didn't make. Now Vaughn tops it by perfectly nailing a role that Murray, with his defiant homeliness, probably couldn't play: a ladies man who taps into the carnal core of any woman he targets. Yet the two actors share an uncommon bond with viewers, especially males; they are walking ids, who say, do and ultimately get away with anything they want. They're what some men wish they could be if they could get it in writing that they wouldn't be sued, arrested or worse.

Wilson has a bit of that going for him, but John is the crasher propped up to learn lessons in true love, so after the first 20 minutes or so he's in puppy love mode. Still funny, but it isn't until all seems lost for John that the screenplay allows Wilson to get goofy again, in a melancholy way. His timing with Vaughn is impeccable; they build upon each other's sneaky thoughts like old pals, not actors who have memorized a script.

It's a compliment to the supporting cast that Walken, usually a scene larcenist in comedies, is the least effective of the bunch. McAdams was unrecognizable to me as a brunet, although I greatly enjoyed her work with other hair colors in Mean Girls and The Notebook. She uses that transient anonymity like young Dustin Hoffman, creating new people each time out. Jane Seymour adds just enough spice as Claire's nymphomaniac mother - the "Stifler's mom" fantasy again - that we wish more scenes included her. And Fisher has a nice psychotic glint in her eyes as Jeremy's erotic albatross.

The movie gets flabby at the 90-minute mark, which is where most comedies deserve to end. The last act, when John and Jeremy's friendship is tested, would be funnier and probably more touching if condensed into a musical interlude with an appropriate makeup song. Dobkin slows his movie with two such interludes as conventional plot movers; why not poke fun at the cliche?

Grade: B+

Director: David Dobkin

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Christopher Walken, Jane Seymour, Keir O'Donnell, Bradley Cooper, Ellen Albertini Dow

Screenplay: Steve Faber, Bob Fisher

Rating: R; sexual content, profanity, brief nudity

Running time: 119 min.

[Last modified July 13, 2005, 09:36:06]