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 | Wedding Crashers Director: David Dobkin Rating: M Now Showing  Yes folks, it's yet another Wilson-Vaughn enterprise (sans Ben Stiller) that employs the 'genitals are funny' approach. As a viewer that was utterly nauseated by 'Meet The Fockers', I approached this latest comedy with much trepidation, but I was, sure enough, pleasantly surprised by 'Wedding Crashers'. As expected, there are innuendo jokes aplenty, but the script is actually clever for the most part, despite what could well have been a cringe-worthy plot line. We are introduced to the cunning partners-in-crime - Jeremy Klein (Vince Vaughn) and John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) - just 'living the dream': following the 'rules' of wedding crashing, they attend the nuptials of complete strangers in order to pick up the many desperate women assumed to be present. This plot line is introduced early and then embellished with a gratuitous sequence involving copious amounts of alcohol, cake and women. After all, how many naked women do you need to see in a bed before you get the general idea? (I can just imagine it dawning upon a naive viewer, as the seventh pretty young thing falls emphatically onto the sheets, 'Oh, they go to weddings to get laid.') It's all fun and games as the boys crash their way through countless women until a wedding at which the Secretary of Treasury's daughter is tying the knot, with younger sisters Claire and Gloria (Rachel McAdams and Australian Isla Fisher) as bridesmaids. Klein and Beckwith choose the two sisters as their challenge, posing as brothers Jeremy and John Ryan from New Hampshire. John becomes infatuated with Claire while 6'5" Jeremy dances the pint sized Gloria off her feet. When the opportunity arises to spend the weekend at Treasurer Cleary's holiday house, John is ecstatic, but Jeremy back-pedals fast, having diagnosed Gloria as a 'Stage 5 cling on'. Jeremy has no choice, however, according to the sacred 'rules', and the two endeavour to keep up their personas as John tries to woo Claire and Jeremy desperately fights off the incessant Gloria. Vaughn and Owen have had plenty of experience working together and it is in their relationship, with its precise rapid-fire bickering, that much of the humour lies. Vaughn's sarcastic remarks and rants throughout the film - about anything from getting winded in American Football to the morality of quail-hunting environmentalists - are also highlights. The Cleary family is, surprise, surprise, a defunct bunch with a foul-mouthed grandma, a shifty-eyed, reclusive younger brother and a randy mother (played by Jane Seymour): all characters devised for some quick laughs. With a surprise cameo appearance in the final stages of the film which still has me in hysterics ('Mom! The meat loaf!'), 'Wedding Crashers' can be forgiven for its soppy ending and crass humour, because it's actually pretty damn funny.  | |
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