Wedding Crashes but Vaughn Soars

Professional divorce mediators John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) have a highly unusual way to spend their vacations. Each spring, three weeks out of the year, they shut down operations and start crashing weddings. Why? It’s the perfect place to meet and pick-up women, unattached females unabashedly aroused by the very thought of marriage and eager to let their inhibitions fade.

With another successful season notched upon their very long belts, Jeremy learns the daughter of popular Treasury Secretary William Cleary (Christopher Walken) is getting married. It’s sure to be the D.C. social event of the year, and if they can become hits at this affair then the duo will certainly go down in history as the ultimate all-stars in the wedding crashing hall of fame.

Things do go well, John and Jeremy finding they’re invited back to the Cleary’s estate for the family-only after party, the latter in particular catching the amorous eye of the youngest daughter Gloria (Isla Fisher, who is a talent to keep track of) after some surprisingly successful beachside intimacy. Two big problems arise, however. The first is that John is falling for middle daughter Claire (Rachel McAdams), an intelligent dynamo engaged to a pompous Ivy League jerk named Sack (Bradley Cooper, terribly unlikable, and not in a good way). The second is that Gloria is a psychotic, sexual animal intent on eating Jeremy whole.

The latter problem is an obnoxious annoyance, the former a potential disaster and Jeremy knows it. It breaks all of the rules of wedding crashing and things can only end badly. But John doesn’t care, his only worry wondering if Claire is going to feel the same for him once she discovers who he is behind all the insidious self-effacing lies.

Welcome to “Wedding Crashers,” the wacky and wild comedy sure to insult just as many people as it entertains. A fitfully funny farce, there are enough sidesplitting scenes of irreverent lunacy here to fill three pictures let alone one. It’s pee-your-pants hysterical, the first two thirds a crassly devilish R-rated cavalcade of poly-amorous larceny so good they’re impossible to forget. Quite frankly, this is the funniest movie of the year and I cannot imagine laughing louder or longer in 2005.

But, just as you think it can’t get any more politically incorrect or bug-eyed hysterical you unfortunately discover you’re right, the last thirty minutes a turgid, unforgivably boring mess that’s so surprisingly maudlin you can see the mothballs starting to form before the end credits start their crawl. There is even a late-inning call to the bullpen featuring everyone’s favorite “Anchorman” (not me, but what do I know) that is a complete waste of time. If anything, his presence stops a movie gasping for comedic air out cold. It’s mind-boggling how completely things go to pieces, a near-classic bad taste comedy in league with “Animal House,” “Caddyshack” or “Blazing Saddles” derailing so thoroughly I couldn’t help but scratch the hair right off my head as I watched it happen.

Still, this movie is frickin’ funny. An opening mediation (featuring a priceless cameo from Rebecca De Mornay) is a hoot and it’s followed quickly by a screamingly silly montage of wedding crashing sure to cause a few spit takes. Director David Dobkin and screenwriters Steve Faber and Bob Fisher hit the ground running pilling gag after wittily raunchy gag one upon the other. Not since “Bad Santa” has a comedy opened with such a magnificent bang, nothing so wonderful as a comedy hitting its stride with such ease.

With a movie like this, nothing works without the right stars. With Wilson and Vaughn, not only are they the right stars, they’re darn near transcendent. Wilson hasn’t been this good outside of a Wes Anderson feature. He saunters through this with vivacious ease, grounding things with good natured charisma. It helps he shares an awesomely beauteous chemistry with McAdams (who with this, “Mean Girls” and the dreadful-save-for-her “The Notebook” is looking more and more like a supremely talented superstar), the two of them playing off one another like Tracy traded witticisms with a certain dame named Hepburn. They’re wonderful, and in a year of dead-on-arrival multiplex romances this one’s a winner.

But that’s nothing compared to Vaughn. I have never been one standing in the actor’s corner. Sure he’s funny and a decent enough actor, all you have to do is watch “Swingers” or “Made” to realize that, I’ve just never found him to be someone I felt could carry a movie. He proves me wrong with his performance here. This is the single most magnificent comedic portrayal I’ve seen in ages. Vaughn is a thunderclap so potent he steals every single scene he’s in no matter whom he’s sharing it with. If Oscar had any guts, and in all honesty the Motion Picture Academy hasn’t since Kevin Kline took home the little gold man for “A Fish Called Wanda,” a supporting actor nomination would be coming his way come next February. It’s not going to happen but Vaughn is so good, so startlingly awesome, the fact that it isn’t is going to rank right up there with some of the biggest tragedies in Academy Award history.

If only it didn’t all fall apart so suddenly with such a deafeningly sickening thud! Dobkin’s movie comes out of left field like a shimmering ray of sunshine, for it to devolve so quickly into a downbeat thunderstorm of misbegotten clichés and misplaced melodrama just isn’t fair. Once the revelations start happening, there just isn’t any place for it to go, and as hard as all four pieces of the two romantic couples try there just isn’t anything they can do. Even Walken can’t resurrect things. His only reason to be here at all is to be cast against type as a solid family-loving everyman who’s own skeletons are buried so deeply within the closet the closest viewers get to them is a quick flash of wife Jane Seymour’s shockingly spectacular boobs. He’s not funny, which when you consider how much of a genius the actor can be in even the most misbegotten of features (“Kangaroo Jack” anyone?) that’s really saying something.

Watching “Wedding Crashers” fall to pieces is truly painful; this is one of the best comedies I’ve had the pleasure to witness in ages and seeing it disintegrate so completely just isn’t fair. Still, the moments that work do so exceedingly well, the laughs so fast and furious it’s hard not to be impressed. On top of that comes an earth-rattling comedic showcase from Vaughn, upsetting the status quo and proclaiming loud and clear he wants to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue where it comes to a discussion on the future of cinematic comedy. With this movie he’s definitely there now, staying put only requiring a follow up just as self-assured.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)