I watched the Wedding Crashers with my friend Emalie while we were in Ireland in April, and afterwards I told myself that I should write something about it when I got home… of course, life got in the way so I’m only now sitting down to talk about this film, for lack of a better word.
First off, let me come clean about something. I don’t like Owen Wilson or Vince Vaughn. I don’t like they’re acting, together or apart, and every film I’ve seen them in I have found myself disgusted by the crass humor that is portrayed. I prefer humor that has some intelligence behind it and causes you think while also making you laugh, (hence why I prefer to watch British television than American). While watching The Wedding Crashers I found myself becoming more and more offended and annoyed rather than uplifted. It was Emalie and I’s ignorance that lead us to popping the dvd in and watching this poor excuse for a film.
For those who don’t know, The Wedding Crashers is about two friends, John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn), who enjoy crashing weddings. They’ve done it for years and are very skilled in the act of fooling everyone that they belong at the reception. The first 10 minutes of the film is a sequence of John and Jeremy drinking, laughing, dancing, talking, and, of course, having sex with bridesmaids. Predictably, 20 minutes in, Wilson’s character meets the girl of his dreams as he crashes her relative’s wedding. Wilson and Vaughn proceed to dig themselves into a deeper and deeper hole as they accompany the wedding party to their private lake house, where many strange and somewhat sickening situations occur, including Vince Vaughn getting a hand job underneath the table at dinner.
Wilson continues to chase after his new crush, Claire Cleary (Rachel McAdams), disregarding the fact that she has a boyfriend (Bradley Cooper). The writers tried desperately to shape a love story between John and Claire, but without success. The two of them go off and have bike rides and walks on the beach, but all John tells her is lies so as not to blow his cover as a wedding crasher. When the reveal happens John and Jeremy are kicked out of the Cleary’s home and then we move into the “friendship breakup” where Jeremy gets pissed off and leaves John to deal with his sad existence. Jeremy decides to marry Claire’s sister Gloria (Isla Fisher), and at the ceremony John shows up and asks Claire to marry him, which she accepts. At this point I was about ready to explode. Claire has only known John for barely a week and the John she knew was a man that does not truly exist. A man who spends his weekends figuring out how to get into weddings so that he can get drunk on free booze and screw women without having to deal with the mess of a real relationship.
I think that the writer’s main problem was choosing a topic that had no plot. There’s nothing more that can be made out of a subject like wedding crashers. They come, they booze, they eat, they have sex, they leave. No woman in her right mind would settle down with someone who was still immature enough to crash weddings. The entire film was a misogynistic fantasy that made me gag. It’s a movie I don’t plan on ever seeing again, and I would not suggest it to my worst enemy.
Autumn Micketti 