Wedding Crashers

Wedding Crashers is a great time at the movies. Although the film achieves nothing new in terms of creativity, and its style is more "by the book" than more recent comedies (i.e. "Anchorman"), it's nonetheless funny, and the performances prove there is a reason Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are two of the most in-demand comedic actors today.

In the film, the two play John Beckwith (Wilson) and Jeremy Gray (Vaughn), a pair of lawyers and long time best friends who share a bizarre but amusing fondness for crashing weddings. At the wedding of the eldest daughter of Secretary Cleary (Christopher Walken), John falls for sister of the bride Claire (Rachel McAdams) and drags Jeremy away with the family for a weekend despite Jeremy's wanting to stay as far away from Cleary's psychotically hounding daughter Gloria (Isla Fisher). Unfortunately for John, Claire is in a long term relationship and soon becomes engaged, leaving him with the task of making her love him, meanwhile Jeremy is simply trying to survive.

Rachel McAdams, as she tends to do, steals the show as she sells herself completely as the only heartfelt, genuine character in the movie. The script isn't anything to write home about, but thankfully one gets the feeling that Vaughn stopped reading his scripts a long time ago (and in this case, that is not a bad thing).

Although the direction seems overzealous at times (far too many closeups that don't necessarily aid in the telling of the story), director David Dobkin does a good job at sitting back and letting his performers do what they do best. If nothing else, movie goers will leave the theater having been thoroughly entertained.