Jokes that are amusing for a second get dragged out for eternity, and the physical comedy isn’t half as effective as director Jake Szymanski thinks it is. This one definitely falls into the latter category.
Advertisement
Zac Efron and Adam DeVine are Dave and Mike Stangle, two troublemaking brothers with a knack for walking the tightrope of party-makers/breakers.
What I thought would be a fun night out with my mom, because she said the trailer “looked amusing”, just turned into a really, really long drive following the end credits. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates has the jumpy exuberance of a puppy that won’t stop humping your leg. It’s a bummer that the jokes don’t land often enough, especially in the final third when the tone takes a turn for the tame. WTF!?! Here in the film they had find an craigslist ad to find out dates to their cousin’s wedding, and that ad is just got viral, and the cousin has been changed into the younger sister, Sugar Lyn Beard she is playing a character of younger sister named Jeanie, and here the wedding just goes to Hawaii. But she and born hard-ass Tatiana have agreed not to capitulate before Jeanie’s wedding, so you can just about feel screenwriters Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien (former Judd Apatow cohorts, best known for the two Neighbors features) scouring around trying to figure out what their boys and girls can do to create mayhem without doing the nasty.
While Kendrick (Pitch Perfect) and Plaza (Dirty Grandpa) do their best to mine the comedy out of their bad-girls-go-good facade, there’s a sense of deja vu about the endless pratfalls, bridal abuse and drug-enhanced mayhem (go rent or stream the little-seen, hugely underrated and impressively cast Bachelorette for more consistent laughs on a similar subject). It’s clear that both of these guys are naturally amusing individuals who are both having a ball riffing off each other’s different types of humor. His quick-talking, high-pitched demeanor works wonderfully with his nearly over-caffeinated way of moving, which also pairs beautifully with his unabashed vulgarism.
Advertisement
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates hits theaters tomorrow. The characters are what’s funny-though the funniest two are not in the title at all. “So I don’t want to mess it up”. Except “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” mercifully gives a big middle finger to the rom-com formula and instead chooses to focus on characters’ relationships with friends and themselves. This means that the film is only skin deep when it comes to its laughs, which is enough for a good time, but not quite enough to make it memorable.
