Film Reviews

Wedding Crashers

• Rating:
• Director: David Dobkins.
• Starring: Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams.
• Details: US / 119 mins (15A).

We've all done it - copped off at a wedding, intoxicated by the whiff of romance and maybe six too many gin and tonics. John (Wilson) and Jeremy (Vaughn) take this premise and run with it - and run and run and run. Committed womanisers, the pair crash weddings to take advantage of lowered defences and have their not entirely wicked way with a series of unsuspecting ladies. All goes well until - inevitably - one of our heroes comes a cropper in falling in love with the delectable Claire (McAdams). What now for our dastardly duo? A rambunctious, bawdy and irreverent comedy (until the saccharine ending), Wedding Crashers offers an inspired pairing in Wilson and Vaughn, both of whom visibly relish the opportunity to get down and dirty with some juicy dialogue. Director David Dobkins does a fair job of keeping the story motoring along on the straight and narrow, but the problem with this film is that it's all straight and narrow - when it reaches for width and depth, there's nothing there. It's a frat-boy larkabout tuxed up as a romantic comedy (or vice versa, depending on where you stand on frat-boy larkabouts), and while the coarse, raunchy humour is appealing to begin with, it soon begins to pall.

Review by Declan Burke