Wedding Crashers

[Spoilers within.]

If you laughed, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, and director David Dobkin made it to first base. Second base if it made you horny. “Love triumphs after all” came to mind -- third base. If you thought this was a great movie, you got screwed and liked it. But I must have liked the piece I got (so a longish post).

Funny, sexy, sometimes very clever, the movie’s worth the ticket price. But don’t buy popcorn. Wedding Crashers’ clever premise builds a showcase for its stars and their onscreen lovers, who spend the second half of the movie sweating under the weight of set pieces they’re carrying.

In the first nearly perfect seven minutes, we meet John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Klein (Vince Vaughn) and learn things that pervasive advertising hasn’t dropped trou about. The pair are divorce mediators who mount a charm offensive on divorcing combatants. The scene goal: to compromise on who gets the frequent flier miles in the divorce. John and Jeremy evoke sentimental memories of the wedding and invoke the promise of getting laid afresh tomorrow. The couple’s resolve softens. The scene perfectly shows – not tells – John and Jeremy’s M.O.: using the power of weddings to soften hearts, faith in their indomitable charm, and the imperative of sex. The wedding crashers’ C.V. Bullseye.

The second stunning sequence is the wedding season. The story compresses the entire season of maybe twelve nuptials of varied religions and classes into about eight minutes. John and Jeremy follow the rules of their hero, Chaz Reingold (Will Ferrell), legend and Yoda of wedding crashers: have a good back story, know the family, win the kids, charm the old ladies, avoid the cash bar (or wear a borrowed purple heart and leave your wallet at home), slap backs, joke, poke, go.

This orgy of ingratiation, dance fever, and taffeta-on-hotel-room-floors ends in ejaculations of champagne bottles. Oh, why can’t R-rated comedy always be this clever and naughty? But John, about to conquer another beautiful woman’s country, stalls in self doubt: he’d actually like to know who he’s shagging.

Exhausted and empty, completely unlike the tumid Washington monument in the scene, John is relieved the season is over. But Jeremy throws down the gauntlet: Treasury Secretary William Cleary’s (Christopher Walken) oldest daughter is marrying and crab cakes will be outstanding. Rule number (pick a number): never crash a wedding alone. John relents to pose as Jeremy’s brother, a partner in venture capital firm for socially responsible entrepreneurs.

John wants to more than bedding beautiful bridesmaids, something he soon recognizes as love. Jeremy wants to win, place, and show in what he calls the “Kentucky Derby” of weddings. While John is transforming into the best damn guy in the world, except of course for lying about his identity and propinquity to Cleary blood, Jeremy wets his wick with Gloria Cleary, who claims it was her first time. She pulls back her eager, bubbly mask to reveal a “stage-five clinger.” Meanwhile, John falls for Claire Cleary. From this point on, some funny stuff happens, but it has little to do with the what these characters want: love (John), and to get the hell out of there (Jeremy).

At this point, the movie turns episodic, giving us more time, presumably, to really, really like John (Wilson). Jeremy fights numerous foes (Gloria, fulfilling his bondage fantasies - but given Jeremy’s taste for adventure, how much is he suffering anyway?; Todd, the creepy gay brother who develops a crush on Jeremy (homophobia cliché); and Sack Lodge, Claire’s boyfriend, who’s vents his entitled rage on Jeremy). But his real conflict is with John, who won’t let Jeremy leave until Claire knows he loves her.

The movie repeatedly missed opportunities for hilarious conflict between Jeremy and John. Imagine Jeremy being subjected to these indignities as suffering for his loyalty to John. It would have upped the stakes, and each scene would turn into a test of their friendship, a test of what each of them will do for love. And what people will do for love, well, that’s funny.

Me? Second base.