Wedding Crashers

The way I see it, I have two choices. Either: 1, stop going to see big budget Hollywood movies or 2, stop expecting them to be any good. Knowing me, I'll take option two; but knowing my optimistic and forgiving nature, it will be difficult to sustain the low expectations and then I'll be right back in the position I'm in today- sorely disappointed at a movie I desperately wanted to be good.

It seems like lately all I do is bitch about Hollywood movies. If you're getting tired of all this bitching, don't worry, I am too. I don't want to hate them, honestly, but they leave me no choice. They are sloppy. They're filled with bad acting and bad writing and bad storytelling and bad everything else that you can think of. They are just bad. Wedding Crashers is no exception. My love for Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson couldn't even save this movie. Sure, if you were sitting next to me in the theatre you would have caught me laughing a couple times. But a few laughs does not a good movie make. You could tell in the first ten minutes that this movie was going to suck. It was solidified about twenty minutes in when they went into a way too long (I'm talking at least 5 minutes) montage of scenes from various weddings the pair crashed set to the beat of loud annoying music, a la what you might expect to see in a trailer or a teaser for the movie. But this wasn't a trailer or a teaser, this was the actual movie. Dumb.

Just so you don't think I'm a movie snob, I adore Vaughn and Wilson's work. I love Vince Vaughn in Swingers (one of my favorite comedies), Old School and Dodgeball; he was even pretty amusing in Mr & Mrs Smith. And Owen Wilson, he's one of my favorite actors. He's phenomenal in all the Wes Anderson films like Bottle Rocket and Royal Tennenbaums and Life Aquatic. His cameo in Meet the Parents was hilarious, and I'm ashamed to admit I loved Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights. So being a genuine fan I hoped for the best going into this film. And I got the worst. Vince Vaughn's long fast-talking monologues can be hilarious. They can also fall flat- that's what these did. The same with Owen Wilson's quirkiness, it can be hilarious, or it can just be dumb- this was dumb. There were weird choices in this movie- weird character traits (Vince Vaughn's over-eating), weird characters (the gay brother), weird makeup (Owen Wilson looked like a woman at times, it was caked on so thick). I could go on, but honestly I'm tired of hearing myself complain about the same things in movie after movie, and I'm sure you are too.

I'd have to give Wedding Crashers two and a half stars. There were some times I laughed, but I'm not sure if I was laughing because it was funny, or because I felt bad that other people were laughing and I wasn't. I'm beginning to wonder how I've strayed so far off the mainstream, where critics are giving this movie three and a half stars and popular opinion is giving it four and a half stars, and I can barely muster a chuckle. Ah well, that's a topic for another post. For now I'll just cross off #249 from my list: see Wedding Crashers.