I sincerely love the movie “Wedding Crashers,” if you hear me talk about it there will be no irony involved.
The idea of two guys who crash weddings to pick up chicks is actually pretty original and genius, but little else about “Wedding Crashers”is very original, which really doesn’t matter.
I love romantic comedies way too much, and I’ve seen way too many. They’ve made me into a person that wants to fall in love in exactly that way far too much and it’s been damaging to my life.
The number of romantic comedies based on a decent guy somehow lying to a girl and then having to show that they not only now are sincere, but always have been in some way would be a really long list.
Unless I’m in a more violent mood and say “True Romance,” I will pretty much always say that “10 Things I Hate about You” is my favorite movie, and it is the definition of that formula even if it is based on “Taming of the Shrew,” which again bolsters the notion that Shakespeare either wrote everything first or stole everything that existed and ever would exist.
This movie has exactly the same premise although it was inspired by far less than Shakespeare.
Sometimes the guy makes a bet that forces him into being shady, sometimes someone pays the guy to be shady, sometimes the guy doesn’t even lie he has just always been shady and he has to tell the person he has fallen in love with that their new love has turned them into a better person or at least towards becoming one.
This is one of my favorite songs because it comes from a character who up front who admits that he has screwed things up in the past by being shady in almost every way, that there is absolutely no evidence he still isn’t shady, but he’s so in love he begs her for a shot at not being shady with absolutely no reason to do so.
I also love books and movies about really bright people who work way too hard to achieve their goals hustling people cleverly when they could probably be just as successful being legitimate and doing less work.
And Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn do work hard at being shady. They do tons of immaculate research to make their cons successful, and they seemingly have acquired a lot of skills to become the people they pretend to be. Whether they do have ulterior motives and they do, they always make the weddings more joyful, because for the most part they are always joyful about their cons.
This is one of my favorite parts of the movie.
And of course that balloon bicycle does get made!
I love that there are about ten thousand rules to being a wedding crashing team, and although you can tell that a whole lot of them are real, you can’t tell how many are merely invented on the spot to fit the situation.
Between the two of them, Vaughn is the much shadier, which of course just means that he never for a second has to deal with any repercussions for his crimes.
Wilson has more of a soul and shows some regrets even before the the wedding he falls in love at, so of course he needs to fall to suicidal levels of depression.
Isla Fisher is pretty much the epitome of crazy sexuality here, she instantly knows Vince Vaughn is full of shit and fucks with him endlessly, and for that reason he actually falls in love with her.
Christopher Walken is here and it is always fun to have Christopher Walken around unless he is on a boat with drunken, angry married movie stars. He plays a wealthy politician who is probably completely full of shit, but at all times he cares about his kids and genuinely wants for them what they truly want for themselves.
Bradley Cooper is probably the one from this movie with the biggest career right now. I had seen him a lot on “Alias” as a genuinely nice guy, but a really wimpy one. Had Jennifer Garner had no spy skills on that show, she still would have been able to beat the crap out of Cooper, which is why when he appears here as a cravenly violent, psychopath, I didn’t even realize it was him the first time I saw the movie.
Rachel McAdams is of course the perfect girl, and of course because this is a formula romantic comedy, the only flaw she has is that she doesn’t seem to realize that her boyfriend is indeed a cravenly violent psychopath, which is evident to everyone else at all times.
Will Farrel wants meatloaf from his mom and almost steals the movie, and the concept of crashing funerals is genius and probably works.
When Wilson has to start crashing weddings alone and fails, from what I’ve read about hustling teams that is exactly what happens when you try to go solo.
There are a lot of insane tasteless characters here, but they are fun too.
I love every second of Vaughn’s insanely frustrated confession to a priest that doesn’t consider it to be a privileged confession.
Of course there has to be that heartfelt plea for romance and this has it, and it is helped by Cooper’s clear sadism, but it does come across as romantic, sincere and genuine. It also includes perhaps the greatest friendship surprise sucker punch ever.
The whole character of Todd though hasn’t aged particularly well. He’s a messed up kid who is having problems dealing with his sexuality and it probably isn’t a great thing to make fun of people going through that and they portray his as basically a rapist and child molester in training . When he does tell Vaughn that he is going to molest him and has painted a really creepy portrait of him to celebrate it, everything about it is truly creepy.
So when Vaughn and Wilson do eventually get shown to be the liars they are, which is again a formula necessity, Todd wants his creepy painting back. Vaughan’s absurd but completely serious reply, “The painting was a gift Todd, I’m taking it with me” is by miles my favorite line in movie!
It also ends somewhat productively with two couples in love deciding to crash weddings together with no ulterior motives other than having fun and spreading it, set off on the road by the perfect song, The Faces, “Stay With Me.” Rod Stewart should have followed his own advice.
Now if you want to hear about the worst, most depressing, and least fun wedding speech ever look here: The most self pity-ing speech of all time
