Movie: Wedding Crashers (COM)

I liked Wedding Crashers a great deal more than I expected to.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson's characters have perfected the art of crashing weddings. They show up, unannounced and uninvited, with fake names and backstories as well as a keen awareness of a variety of cultural wedding traditions. Why? Because women apparently become so turned on by the idea of marriage that they become Very Susceptible to these guys' sleazy, mock-sentimental charm. (One tagline for the movie was Hide Your Bridesmaids.)

Okay, so the crashing scenes were very funny. We see a montage of different wedding receptions with VV and OW as the happening guys at the center of all the fun. They make balloon animals and dance with flower girls and laugh at elderly men's jokes. Eventually, of course, we see them with a string of beautiful, smiling, naked wedding guests. (This is, after all, why our boys crash weddings.) There's a fun fantasy element here; who wouldn't love to be as self-confident as these guys are when they meet total strangers?

After such a strong and funny opening, I wasn't sure what to expect. Frankly, two hours of wedding crashing and bed hopping would have revealed how shallow and sleazy these guys really are. However, OW does the unthinkable and makes an Emotional Connection with a woman. Suddenly, the two guys are sharing a weekend house with two sisters, their father (Christopher Walken), and their very randy mother (Jane Seymour). VV keeps trying to dump the sister he's shagged (she's a Stage Five Clinger), but OW just wants to get to know the other sister better. She's got a controlling jerk boyfriend, so OW knows he can't bed her; he just wants to talk to her. Honest!

Basically, what starts out as a sex romp becomes a sweet story about real love, so much so that the continuing sexual elements (like the mom showing off her new boob job) seem even more hideous and juvenile. Still, this is a story with heart. Grade: B