Common Sense Note
Parents should know that the movie features sexual humor, imagery (bared breasts), and language (including slang for gay and lesbian sex and repeated uses of the f-word). There is lying, drinking, smoking, and sex (couples appear in various states of undress, including a bondage scene). The film includes a reference to "rolling a fatty," some rough touch football (hard tackling by a very competitive player, whom someone jokingly describes as being "on steroids"), a bloody beating, vomiting, attempted seductions of one man by his girlfriend-to-be's mother, an attempted homosexual seduction, and a woman's masturbation of her lover under the dinner table.
Families who see this movie might discuss the lessons learned by John and Jeremy. How do they come to realize that their self-centered gallivanting is immature? How does the movie set up a contrast between their deceitfulness and that of Sack, who cheats at touch football and on his fiancée?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Raucous and happily obnoxious, WEDDING CRASHERS makes fun of liars and cheaters, ultimately celebrating a shlocky version of "true love." Divorce mediators John (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy (Vince Vaughn) are cocky, careless, and fast-talking hustlers. By day they counsel angry or otherwise miserable couples, but once "wedding season" starts, they attend weddings under fake names, in order to eat hors d'oeuvres, drink champagne, and meet women.
This premise of David Dobkin's frantic comedy has been described as a return to R-rated jokes (like the hair gel gag in Something About Mary), set against a PG-13 tide. But here the R leads to less risky or even imaginative writing than predictable uses of explicit language, sexual situations, and adolescent humor. Longtime best friends John and Jeremy match their stories before they crash, encourage elaborate lying tactics, and compare "date" notes afterwards. Though they briefly wonder, seated on the steps of Lincoln Memorial one early morning, if maybe they're getting too old for such behavior, they don't really know what else to do, and take as their role model a guy named Chaz (Will Ferrell), who still lives with his mother at 40, but "gets laid" regularly (which he calls "living the dream").
The "crashers"' attitudes change when John falls in love with lovely Claire (Rachel McAdams) at her sister's wedding. The stakes seem high for this latest deception, because her father is Treasury Secretary William Cleary (Christopher Walken), her lusty sister Gloria (Isla Fisher) takes an avid liking to Jeremy (as he puts it, "She's really off the reservation"), and her mother Kathleen (Jane Seymour) tries to seduce John. That, and, Claire is engaged to marry wealthy, well-positioned bully Sack (Bradley Cooper), which means that John and Jeremy's weekend at the Cleary compound is comprised of competitions and deceptions, as John tries to win Claire and Jeremy tries to avoid Gloria (and her brother, Todd [Keir O'Donnell], who decides he's in love with Jeremy, sneaking into his room at night, after Gloria has left him helplessly tied to the bedposts).
The Meet the Parents-style commotion includes familiar, if vaguely raunchy humor -- John tries to impress William; Kathleen makes John "feel her hooters"; Grandma Mary (Ellen Albertini Dow) makes ugly comments about "homos"; Sack finds ways to beat up both crashers; a drunken Jeremy confesses his growing affection for Gloria to Father Gibson (Henry Gibson); and Jamaican butler Randolph (Ron Canada) shows his disdain for Sack by helping John find an elusive Claire.
Usually, a little Vaughn goes a long way, but here he serves as welcome respite from Wilson's cloying romantic lead. Though Vaughn embodies the film's embrace of vulgar comedy, he also maintains a sense of irony (even when he discovers he loves Gloria, whose middle-of-the-night bondage scene makes him feel "like Jodie Foster in The Accused"). But Wilson is stuck with the "sincere" role in an otherwise mostly boisterous movie, and he's unconvincing during his moony-eyed romance montages and slow-moving amid the mayhem.
Families who enjoy this movie might also like the similarly themed Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, Dodgeball, Anchorman, and Old School; or they might look for more agreeable versions of this transformation story, in The Philadelphia Story or Holiday.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentExposed breasts, sexual situations (including bondage and masturbation). |
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ViolenceRough football and a beatdown, shot mostly in shadows. |
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LanguageFrequent obscenities and sexual slang, rendered comedically. |
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Social BehaviorMost characters lie, cheat, and abuse trust; some learn the error of their ways. |
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CommercialismVisibly branded food and beverage products. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoAt weddings, the crashers get drunk repeatedly; one reference to " a fatty." |
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