Vince Vaughn is the walking, talking, face-stuffing id.
No thought goes unspoken. No leer goes unseen. No hors d’oeuvre goes untasted.
And Vaughn’s hard work makes the hybrid comedy “Wedding Crashers” work. Part R-rated raunch fest, part buddy movie, part chick flick, “Wedding Crashers” owes much of its success to Vaughn, who keeps all the parts jumping with his abrasive mouth.
When the bridesmaid walks down the aisle, and the wide-eyed Vaughn says, “Dibs,” he says it all. But he also says it in long rants, excruciating tirades, puling complaints.
At one point, Vaughn’s Jeremy Gray is subjected to a bondage session with a woman and then an “inappropriate” gift from her brother. We see it all, but it’s even funnier when Vaughn sums it up for Owen Wilson at breakfast: “A midnight rape and a nude gay art show.” Vaughn’s comedy hooks up reality to a higher voltage.
Gray and John Beckwith (Wilson) are divorce mediators who spend each summer crashing weddings of strangers to meet women. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but they exploit love for sex. Still, “Wedding Crashers” succeeds because it’s sympathetic to the raw emotions that big ceremonies scrape open.
Vaughn and Wilson have terrific chemistry, clearly the element that set Hollywood executives rubbing their hands with glee over an R comedy for adults rather than another mush- mouthed, please-no-one PG-13.
When Wilson worries about a cash-bar wedding, Vaughn flips open a box of fake Purple Hearts that will get them free drinks. They trade bridesmaid-killing lines: “They say we only use 10 percent of our brains. I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts.” During the ceremonies, they bet on little sister’s choice of Bible readings: “Twenty bucks says First Corinthians.”
But Wilson, playing his usual dopey-sweet role, breaks the cardinal rule of bachelor crashing by falling in love. At the wedding of the secretary of the Treasury’s oldest daughter, he goes moony over middle daughter Rachel McAdams. Vaughn, meanwhile, takes dibs on youngest daughter Isla Fisher, who may turn out to be randier than he is.
A “Meet the Parents” interlude goes on a bit long – we have to be menaced and charmed by Christopher Walken as the Treasury secretary, and dispatch the obnoxious boyfriend, the sex-starved wife (Jane Seymour) and the potty-mouthed grandmother. Director David Dobkin, who previously coached Wilson in “Shanghai Knights,” should know that comedy is 90 minutes, unless you apply for a special license.
Much has been made of the R rating, at a time when many studios tamp everything down to the PG-13 level for better box office. (Tougher enforcement of the R costs teenage ticket sales.)
What “Wedding Crashers” gets right is that there’s more to an R than extra F-bombs. Targeting adults means smarter material, if you get the right script, and writers Steve Faber and Bob Fisher have a nice ear for the funnier things that make us human.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
“Wedding Crashers”
***½
R for nudity, language, strong sexual content and adult themes|1 hour, 59 minutes|COMEDY|Directed by David Dobkin; written by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher; starring Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Christopher Walken, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher and Jane Seymour|Opens today at area theaters.
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*** 1/2|
