‘Crashers’ Give Goofy Titillation

The gratuitous breast medley that punctuates John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Gray’s (Vince Vaughn) mission to bed buxom beauties is certain to leave the target demographic of “Wedding Crashers”—teen- to college-aged guys—more than satisfied this weekend.

But any moans of—er—pleasure are certain to turn to groans of a different kind when the comedy takes a hard right turn into romantic comedy cheese. As Wilson and his movie love interest bicycle down a hill into a herd of grazing goats, any veteran of “Dodgeball” or “Zoolander” would bet on an awesome crash into some very disgruntled animals. Sadly, only some girls may be left in “awwwww” as the precious little creatures trot away.

At this point, even a complete romantic comedy sucker would have to cringe. Still, this isn’t your typical “There’s Something About Mary”-style gross-out comedy with a bit of love on the side. As charter members of the Ben Stiller posse, co-stars Wilson and Vaughn serve up enough scatological humor to go around, but a large, and better, portion of the movie is devoted to the beautiful path to finding your soul mate.

“Wedding Crashers” is built around the characters of Beckwith and Grey, best friends who run a divorce mediation firm together. This occupational info is useless, but the opening scene does serve to present us with the key facts: these guys are kind of girly. Wait, I mean, these guys love to crash weddings.

Armed with an endless list of rules and strategies, they join in all the festivities from making toasts to instructing the bride and groom on reception niceties. The stated goal may be manipulation to produce copulation with a starry-eyed wedding attendee, but the boys’ attention to detail is normally reserved for the bride herself.

The nuptials of the daughter of Treasury Secretary William Cleary present the duo with the ultimate challenge—“the Kentucky Derby of wedding crashing.” Cleary is played by the ever-more-iconic Christopher Walken, who takes the step back from the caricature he has become to remind us that he still can act.

When the party gets started, each man quite conveniently finds himself with one of Cleary’s other daughters. But there are a few snags: Jeremy has a “stage five clinger” named Gloria (Isla Fisher), psychopathic and newly devirginalized (by him); and John makes a connection with Claire (Rachel McAdams), which is complicated by the arrival of her uber-preppy, uber-delusional boyfriend Sack (Bradley Cooper). But what waits at the end of the rainbow is the inevitable, magical, golden love for both of the crashers…Or does it? Yes, yes it does.

Although a nice portion of the laughs make it into the Will Ferrell stratosphere—the gold standard for a posse member—many fall to the lowest common denominator (at least of late) of Stiller. Both Wilson and Vaughn can do comedy and, even if the best moments showed up in the previews, there are a few gems worth paying for. And as often as Vaughn’s “I’m-shit-crazy-and-yelling-really-loudly” shtick succeeds, you still wonder whether he has some sort of facial tick.

This wretched excess usually backfires. The Cleary family is a perfect example. The crazy grandmother with the potty-mouth—played by the rapping grandma from the “Wedding Singer” (Ellen Albertini Dow)—is hilarious. However, the crazy-seductress mother (“Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman”’s Jane Seymour) playing sexy in a shot-by-shot homage to The Graduate is only amusing in its absurdity. Add to this the crazy-seducer homosexual brother and the already insane Gloria and Sack, and the fun begins to pale.

Meanwhile, Sack has every evil boyfriend cliché in the rom-com oeuvre. Being unstable and borderline abusive certainly isn’t enough for us to root against him, so we better make sure we throw in “sleeps with lots of other woman,” and “going to make Claire quit working and become a housewife” into the mix.

Director David Dobkin (veteran of the Wilson flick “Shanghai Knights” and Vaughn’s “Clay Pigeons”) allows the romance to slip into overload, and the numerous musical montages and extreme close-ups to start to grate. But all this is tempered by the chemistry of Wilson and McAdams.

And the chemistry hits a home run. Not just with Wilson and McAdams—a natural demeanor goes a long way in making romance work—but with big ol’ softie Vaughn. Choosing not to make too many juvenile and so-10-years-ago allusions to a homosexual love for laughs (a choice neglected in the case of Claire’s brother), Dobkin lets the two actors create a real friendship. Like all good buddy movies, the girls are mainly diversions, allowing male viewers to avoid the squeamishness of going on a man date.

In the end, Vaughn and Wilson might do well to graduate to a different level of movie, as their acting skills are better showcased when they are toned down. Until that time, we’ll have to settle for “Crashers” and hope that its genial cast and decent infusion of laughter—not to mention more than a few blubber-worthy moments for the romantics—fulfills our expectations.

—Staff writer Margaret M. Rossman can be reached at rossman@fas.harvard.edu.