Hangover Movie: Wedding Crashers

“Wedding Crashers” is a 2005 movie starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. This comedy dream team worked together previously in “Starsky & Hutch” and “Zoolander”, but “Wedding Crashers” is by far their best team effort.

In this comedy, John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) are divorce mediators in Washington D.C. Naturally, this line of work sours them as to the sanctity of marriage, and these two motor-mouthed conned men spend their free time crashing wedding parties and trying to pick up unaccompanied women. The two work from a set of rules established by a past crasher, Chazz Reinhold (Will Farrell).

In the first half an hour of “Wedding Crashers,” Jeremy and John crash a sequence of weddings and become the hit of every reception. They then begin gearing up for the social event of the year- the wedding for the daughter of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, William Cleary (Christopher Walken). Once inside, the two set their sights on Cleary’s other daughters, Gloria (Isla Fischer) and Claire (Rachel McAdams.) Jeremy ends up sleeping with Gloria on a nearby beach during the reception. Gloria quickly becomes obsessed with Jeremy and claims to have been a virgin until the encounter. Jeremy tries to get John to bail on the reception, but John is busy trying to woo Clair.

John, wanting to spend more time with Claire, convinces Jeremy to accept the family’s invitation to an extended weekend at their family compound. Jeremy agrees reluctantly, not wanting to spend any more time with Gloria. A serious of entertaining event occur at the compound: Jeremy gets hurt during a football game and Gloria tends to him while trying to have sex with him at the same time. John spikes Claire’s fiancé’s drink with eye drops and he gets sick for the rest of the night, allowing him to spend more time with her.  Claire’s mother, Kathleen (Jane Seymour) makes John feel her surgically enhanced breasts.

John and Jeremy’s ruse is eventually discovered by Claire’s fiancé, and they are kicked out of the compound. Jeremy continues to see Gloria secretly and when John finds out, it causes a rift between them. Thoroughly depressed, John begins to crash weddings by himself, often crying or destroying things at the reception and being kicked out. Eventually, he even joins Chazz in crashing a funeral.

“Wedding Crashers” is pretty much a double romantic comedy, plus a “bromance” movie. The first third of the film, where Jeremy and John are crashing weddings, is the most entertaining. They use corny pickup lines and their always the life of the party. “Wedding Crashers” slows a bit when it settles into their serious romantic conflicts. Despite the romances between Jeremy and Gloria and John and Claire, the movie creates a stronger chemistry between the two best buddies than between the buddies and their girlfriends. However, Wilson and Vaughn complement each other nicely, and the cameo by Will Farrell is extremely entertaining. All in all, this is definitely a comedy worth watching.

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