Starring: Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn and Christopher Walken
Director: David Dobkin
Rated: M15+
JOHN Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) are Washington lawyers and sworn bachelors, in this context read philanderers.
They pick up girls for sex at the wedding receptions they crash.
They have their craft down to a fine art, exploiting the fact that no one person at a wedding knows all the guests, or how each of the guests fit into the bride or groom’s circle.
It seems no one in the Washington area has a guest list or a seating plan.
The boys “love ’em and leave ’em” routine works well until they crash the wedding of Christina Cleary, the daughter of the US Treasury Secretary, William Cleary (Christopher Walken).
At this wedding, the increasingly jaded John falls in love with the chief bridesmaid, Claire Cleary (Rachel McAdams).
Love and commitment are not part of the boys’ routine.
Meanwhile, Jeremy stalks and snares Gloria Cleary (Australia’s Isla Fisher).
After he seduces her, Jeremy discovers she is a “clinger”.
When the boys are exposed as frauds by Claire’s bullyboy fiance Sack Lodge (Brad Cooper), they are rejected by their new girlfriends.
But love has bloomed, and while John and Jeremy are forlorn (John starts crashing funerals), Gloria and Claire have to choose between their family and their hearts.
Wilson and Vaughn have been mainstays of several recent hit comedy films out of the US.
The premise for this film had great potential, but writers Steve Faber and Bob Fisher thought the only way to sell the idea was to make it a portrait of serial stalkers and sexual predators.
That’s what we are meant to find funny – two guys approaching middle age who lie to everyone about everything for a free meal, free booze and as many one night stands as they can get.
Wedding Crashers is so sexist as to be offensive on that ground alone. But it gets worse.
There is one scene in the film when the sociopathic Gloria ties Jeremy to his bed while he is asleep and proceeds to rape him.
This is just before Gloria’s mentally ill brother steals into Jeremy’s bedroom on the same night to proposition him.
The next morning Jeremy tells John that he “felt like Jodie Foster in The Accused”, a film which brutally portrayed a woman’s pack rape, and her fight for justice.
Since when was rape fair game for comedy?
I imagine the writers thought it was role reversal sexism, and that made it okay.
I just saw a puerile film trying to get laughs out of sexual violence. Reprehensible.
The constant use of “Jesus” and “Christ” throughout the film, as well as the other violent language will offend many viewers, and there are a few moderate sex scenes and some nudity that will put off others.
But apart from its amoral tone, which the last minute, committed and faithful happy ever after ending in no way compensates us for, David Dobkin’s laboured and sometimes clumsy direction, including several continuity mistakes, sees this drivel spun out for two hours.
