Risible Nuptials
PODHORETZ, JOHN
Risible Nuptials 'Wedding Crashers' is 'a sensational dirty joke of a movie.' BY JOHN PODHORETZ The first 15 minutes of Wedding Crashers are about as good as American comedy gets. Washingtoni-ans...
...There are 37 in all...
...Both tall and a bit goony-looking, stylistically they are actually wonderfully apposite opposites in the manner of Laurel and Hardy...
...Vaughn spits out dialogue like a tobacco auctioneer trying to get prices up...
...John, who has started to question the thrill of the wedding-crasher chase, decides he wants to get to know her and see if there might be something real between them...
...The movie starts running out of gas after about an hour, and grinds to a halt when Claire learns of John's subterfuge...
...Wedding Crashers is a cheerfully and unapologetically ribald sex comedy (so be warned if profanity and nudity offend you...
...She's Gloria, played by an astonishingly hilarious and gorgeous Australian actress named Isla Fisher...
...Their business might be divorce mediation, but their true vocation lies elsewhere...
...Even so, Wedding Crashers— written by a couple of nobodies named Steve Faber and Bob Fisher and directed by a nobody named David Dobkin—is a sensational dirty joke of a movie, the sort of picture that might get people excited about going to the theater again...
...Washingtoni-ans John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Klein (Vince Vaughn) work as divorce mediators, and as the movie opens, we see them browbeat a husband and wife who would just as soon kill each other as settle their outstanding issues into a conciliatory deal—so long as the two guys finally just stop their incessant yammering...
...But John refuses because, like the audience itself, he's almost instantly lost his heart to the ineffably charming Claire (superstar-in-the-making Rachel McAdams, late of The Notebook...
...In the movie's second scene, he zooms through a monologue about why he no longer bothers with dat-ing—and a speech that must have run about four pages in script form is dispensed with in about 30 seconds of screen time...
...Chastened, she returns to him and apologizes...
...Still, those looking for a moral in Wedding Crashers will not be shot...
...Rest assured that John and Jeremy are about to get their comeuppance in hilarious and touching ways...
...She wants Jeremy, and she will have him—even if she has to tie him up (literally) and scourge his wounds to keep him close...
...And in a dazzling montage that fizzles and crackles across the screen, we see the boys doing the kazatsky, making balloon animals for the kiddies to attract the attention of the single women, faking tears to appear sensitive, telling made-up sob stories to tug on the heartstrings, dancing with the grandmas to appear goodhearted, telling ancient thigh-slappers to old men to appear immensely entertaining—all the while scarfing down every crab cake known to man...
...He moves in slow motion, his Texas drawl extending words out until they stretch like a piece of gum stuck to your shoe—and makes Vaughn's hyperactivity both tolerable and lovable...
...Jeremy makes a play for a sweet young thing on the beach who suddenly turns terrifying when she tells him she's a virgin and will love him forever...
...They decide to take on the ultimate wedding-crasher challenge: a Maryland high-society affair made up of equal parts old Chesapeake money and newfangled Homeland Security protection...
...The father of the bride (Christopher Walken) is secretary of the treasury...
...They bed down bridesmaid after bridesmaid, week after week, and make a clean getaway because, after all, they haven't revealed their true last names, jobs, or identities...
...he tells John, which requires an instant hurried exit, stage left...
...It's June—wedding season—and, like Runyonesque horse players heading up to Saratoga, John and Jeremy have already determined which of the month's events are going to attract their attention...
...Vaughn, really, is nothing short of astounding here, but the movie wouldn't work without Wilson's soulful oddity...
...John and Jeremy find themselves invited to the treasury secretary's Eastern Shore estate for the weekend, where they will have to contend with Claire and Gloria's drunken and randy mother (Jane Seymour), an artist brother who likes Jeremy in the same crazy way his sister does, and Claire's insanely competitive fiancé, who suspects these two guys aren't brother venture capitalists from Vermont at all...
...John and Jeremy are professional wedding crashers, who search the engagement columns of the Washington Post for promising nuptials where the food will be plentiful and the unattached bridesmaids numerous...
...Claire is the sister of the bride, and John offers her sage counsel about the toast she is about to give—counsel she ignores, and suffers for ignoring...
...Here they prove themselves a comedy team for the ages...
...It turns out that Gloria is neither sweet nor at all virginal...
...For the past decade, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn have been transfusing life and energy into a variety of delightful and unusual American films...
...I've got a Stage Five clinger...
...crescendo, so do John and Jeremy...
...As it happens, the Stage Five Clinger is also a sister of the bride...
...Finally, as the Jewish and Hindu and Polish and Italian wedding dances reach their John Podhoretz is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
Vol. 10 • July 2005 • No. 42
