In Wedding Crashers, John (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy (Vince Vaughn), two perpetual bachelors, spend the peak wedding season crashing weddings to sleep with single women. When they crash the wedding of a politician’s daughter, they meet women who upend their lives.
I debated for a long time over whether or not Wedding Crashers was an actual rom-com but ultimately decided that yes, yes, it is. It has the rom and the com, and it touches on just enough genre tropes that I decided to review. I’ve seen this movie before, many times actually, and I still really enjoy it.
The 2000s was an enjoyable time for R-rated comedies. Along with Wedding Crashers, there was Zoolander, The Hangover, Tropic Thunder, Stepbrothers, Superbad2, etc.…. and it doesn’t seem like they make comedies the same anymore. That’s not to say there aren’t any good R-rated comedies anymore, but they’re definitely more careful about the content.
Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson stick to what they know best. Vaughn with his perfected quick-talking wit, and Wilson with his soft-spoken, laid-back vibe. They work really well together as Jeremy and John, two best friends and divorce mediators who love to crash weddings. Then they meet the Cleary sisters, Claire (Rachel McAdams) and Gloria (Isla Fisher). John is immediately smitten with Claire, who unfortunately has a boyfriend. Jeremy’s interest in Gloria is purely physical, but he quickly learns she won’t be easy to shake.
John and Claire’s courtship is what you expect to find in a romantic comedy. They’re attracted to one another, and it’s quite apparent that Claire deserves better than her d-bag boyfriend, Sack (Bradley Cooper). The problem is that John has lied about who he is, as he always does when crashing weddings, and the more he falls for Claire, the harder it is for him to come clean.
On the other side of the romantic journey are Jeremy and Gloria. Gloria is, for lack of a better term, crazy. No matter how hard Jeremy tries to end things with her, she latches on even harder. There’s more to Gloria than meets the eye, and watching Isla Fisher go toe-to-toe with Vince Vaughn is probably my favorite part of the movie. It’s funny as hell and a great counterbalance to John and Claire’s more conventional romance.
A few moments seem a bit out of place and are clearly used for laughs and nothing more, but they work well enough as filler. Christopher Walken and Jane Seymour are entertaining as Claire’s parents, though I wish they’d had more to do. Will Ferrell shows up as an aging wedding crasher that John turns to for advice, and he makes the most of his short amount of screentime.
Wedding Crashers is precisely what you would expect from an R-rated comedy in 2005. It has plenty of romance to balance out the comedy, and it’s genuinely one of the funnier comedies of that era. I especially love the wedding scene at the end, when John finally gets to tell Claire exactly how he feels, and I would like to see Rachel McAdams in another romantic comedy soon!
