It's easy to see how Wedding Crashers, the latest offering from the New Comedy Mafia, became the sixth-highest grossing film of 2005 (out-grossing The 40-Year Old Virgin by a cool hundred million dollars). It follows the lad-mag cookbook to a T. You’ve got Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn perfecting the shtick they've been developing for the last eight or 10 years. You’ve got one Genuine Hollywood Legend (Christopher Walken, who continues to not-act his way through every scene while basically playing himself — his default mode in this stage of his career). Add a good rock and roll soundtrack (featuring Coldplay, the Faces, and Mungo Jerry), plus tons of potty humor (courtesy of the Rapping Granny from The Wedding Singer, here playing Granny With a Drinking Problem). Finish it with a little vintage Will Ferrell for that classic flavor; let it cook for about two hours; let cool; rake in the dough.
Wilson gets top billing, but his partner-in-shenanigans gets most of the best lines. It’s the Vince Vaughn Show, pretty much. He’s an inveterate scene hog, selling each mini-monologue with an acknowledging wink — particularly a balloon-animal sequence during the film’s pivotal nuptials, in which he puts Steve Martin's lower intestines to shame. The third act drags on too long, and overall it’s a little sappy, but if you were the sort of dude who cared about plot arcs and character development, you wouldn’t be here now.
Special features
It goes without saying that this one’ll get filed on the shelf between Old School and Animal House, but how much more Wedding footage do you need? The “Uncorked” edition adds eight-and-a-half minutes to the already overlong theatrical version, but both the original and expanded versions are offered on the DVD, with commentary by Vaughn and Wilson and a separate commentary by director Dave Dobkin. I'm not sure anyone was begging to see Granny fantasizing about FDR, but there were a few OK scenes left on the cutting room floor. Exhibit A: Vaughn's beachside rant on the teachings of "the great 19th-century philosopher Schopenhauer." Another decent bonus: Vaughan in an extended "confessional" with the family priest — in which Vaughn pulls off the act of being incredulous to the fact that the Padre has never "pulled on [himself]."
Four deleted scenes flesh out the paltry set, one of which is enjoyable for getting to hear Walken yell "Bluefish!" real loud. Another excised scene has the two leads banging out a killer karaoke rendition of Nena's "99 Red Balloons" during the Chinese wedding. It's funnier than just about any of the "uncorked" version’s added scenes, but it's probably a good thing it was cut — if only because we’d have immediately been subjected to it in every karaoke bar in the world. So to Dave Dobkin, who ultimately decided to cut the scene, but still had the good sense to include it here I say: I like where your head's at. As for the rest of the set, it’s hardly phenomenal.
