Off they go, greeted with glee by Mike and Dave’s family – but, as Alice soon groans, “Being a good girl is haaaard”.
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“Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” is the latest raunchy comedy with a heart of gold to hit local movie theaters. I find myself watching comedy films mostly with a straight face, thinking about the funnier, edgier things that I’ve seen on YouTube with creators far less anxious about their integrity. Once their plan works, they let loose in Hawaii and turn out to be even more destructive than Mike and Dave themselves. When their search for “nice girls” becomes a minor public sensation, they’re tricked by recently unemployed, complete messes Alice (Anna Kendrick) and Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza), posing as a hedge fund manager and teacher, into bringing them along for the free vacation. And Efron melts hearts playing the brother with real goals and aspirations, far different from his immature frat boy role in Neighbors.
The flimsy premise is this: Brothers Michael (Adam DeVine) and David Stangle (Zac Efron), a couple of guys who suffer from serious cases of arrested development, tend to ruin family events by showing up solo, or “stag”, as their father (Stephen Root) puts it.
It turns into a fairly amusing romp, although it could certainly use more laughs. Jeanie gets a massage unlike any we’ve ever seen, and Tatiana does things for Rihanna tickets that are a deviation from the norm, even for her.
Most of us likely have attended weddings where there are at least one or two wacky individuals – perhaps obnoxious clowns is a better description – who think the festivities just wouldn’t be complete without their hilarious antics. Devine, however, doesn’t take a cinematic step down as much as a sideways shuffle along his road to eventual obscurity.
It isn’t surprising that Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is written by Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien, as it encompasses the same humor that they have given us in the past with Neighbors.
See, I told you it was confusing, but watch the video interview at the top of this page and it should all make sense. The ad features an illustration of Mike and Dave as centaurs in front of the Declaration of Independence – that’s not a joke, they really did that – and it goes viral.
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The premise for this romp is simple: Idiot twenty-something brothers Mike (Devine) and Dave (Efron) have a bad habit of ruining family gatherings, solemn or otherwise, with their ludicrous alcohol-fueled antics, and their parents (Stephanie Faracy, Stephen Root) are exhausted of it.
