Just minutes into this flick, there’s a montage of topless women falling back onto beds, overcome with lust for our heroes Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, set to the tune of the wedding reception staple “Shout.”
Though in many ways it may feel like the Reagan era, this isn’t 1984 and you are not watching Bachelor Party; however, Wedding Crashers is a throwback to the days in movies when boys could be lecherous, girls could be brainless, booze flowed freely and we all called it good fun.
Vaughn and Wilson play John and Jeremy, two fast-talking divorce mediators who get their kicks by turning up uninvited to wedding parties and trying to seduce young women. So powerless are these ladies-in-waiting that the mere suggestion of sentiment from these guys gives them an estrogen rush so potent that they fall eagerly into the sack. Yet, though all that raunchy, raw and unabashedly horny humor is somehow refreshing, it’s unfortunate that no one threw us a bone and gave us, say, just one female character whose sole purpose wasn’t to display a nice rack.
You could just call it a guy’s movie, or chalk it up to youthful exuberance, but as Wilson’s character reminds his wedding crashing cohort, “We’re not that young.” Plus, halfway through the cake-gorging, women-baiting reception-fest, the movie takes a turn for the romantic as John falls for New England aristocrat Claire (Rachel McAdams).
McAdams’s character at first gives us hope when she delivers a cynical toast to her newlywed sister, but she’s quickly gutted of any depth, and Claire is briskly relegated to being just a love interest, nothing more.
Though the women in this picture are just a ditzy T&A buffet, Vaughn and Wilson have moments when they are incredibly funny, spilling out improv-fueled comedy tinged with profanity and sexual innuendo. Part of the ubiquitous “Frat Pack” — along with Ben Stiller, Wilson’s brother Luke, Jack Black and Will Ferrell — Wilson and Vaughn rip on each other like a pair of pledge-class buddies at a college reunion.
Vaughn is at his hyperactive best, and Wilson plays the perfect laid-back foil. These two have an enviable amount of chemistry, but putting a chick with a brain into the equation wouldn’t have killed that buzz, guys.
Clare Pfeiffer Ramsey writes about film for Metro Times. E-mail [email protected].
