Wedding Crashers

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are two of the funniest comic actors around, but sometimes directors give comic actors too free a hand. Both of these guys are good at getting the most out of a line, but one gets the feeling they were given too much latitude in this movie. In other words, underdirection.

Sometimes letting things go on too long is funny, but the fun comes from a kind os squirm-in-your-seat discomfort. Beyond a certain point the fun stops while the discomfort remains and that happens several times in the movie.

We tend not to like lying, too, so there's a limit to how funny lying can be, especially when you begin to empathize with some of the victims of the lies. Of course, this can all be woven into a redemption story if you also care about the liars. Owen Wilson in this role becomes sympathetic, but I never developed much sympathy for the Vince Vaughn character.

Basically, it's the story of two shallow guys who crash weddings in order to meet horny girls and have one night stands. When they crash the biggest wedding of the year involving the daughter of a Presidential cabinet minister (played by the always good Christopher Walken), they meet his two other daughters. Vaughn picks the little redhead who is a firecracker but seems to be as nutty as a fruitcake. Wilson makes the wiser choice, the more levelheaded brunette daughter, who unfortunately is spoken for by a snobbish, extremely competitive, and unethical guy played by Brad Cooper.

As Vaughn realizes that the girl he chose is nuts, he wants to leave, but Wilson wants to stay because he thinks he can win the heart of the girl he chose. So, they end up spending the weekend at the Cabinet minister's compound, where things tend to continue to go well for Wilson and poorly for Vaughn.

And then...their deception is discovered and revealed. I'll leave it at that so as not to spoil the ending.

The movie is funny, but not as funny as it could have been. A cameo by another well-known comic actor leads to a very uncomfortable sidebar in the movie and then it has a fairly predictable ending.

It's a movie I could have lived without seeing, but if you want to go, it's good for a few laughs. But there are many better movies playing and there certainly are far better movies you might rent.