Wedding season is in full swing, and what better way to mark the holy institution of marriage than with a gross-out battle of the sexes, with a story culled from a Craigslist ad?
The real-life story of Mike and Dave Stangle made them brief Internet sensations, earned them a spot on the Today show and got them a book deal. The brothers needed respectable dates for their cousin’s wedding and so posted a cheeky ad on Craigslist, complete with photos of their heads superimposed on Centaur bodies with the Declaration of Independence as backdrop.
In director Jake Szymanski’s feature debut, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, the brothers (played by Zac Efron and Adam DeVine) need to get dates for their sister Jeanie’s (Sugar Lyn Beard) wedding in Hawaii, because “going stag” would cause all hell to break loose. Exhibit A is very funny video evidence of the brothers basically ruining everything in which they participate.
And so to make sis happy Mike and Dave place an online ad, which leads to a spot on the Wendy Williams Show. That catches the attention of infrequently sober roomies Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) and Alice (Anna Kendrick), who see the boys as easy marks for a free Hawaiian vacay. They go to work, giving themselves a prim makeover in order to seem “respectable as f***” when they meet Mike and Dave.
This is the crude and comic crux of the film, with Kendrick and Plaza getting the bulk of the laughs as they reveal their true colours with one off-colour comment after another, out bro-ing the bros. As Bridesmaids attested (and Amy Schumer currently hollers from the rooftops), women can out-raunch men in any given situation. Plaza’s prickly gaze and f-bombs can attest to that.
Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien, writers behind the two Neighbors movies (also starring Efron), bury a message in all the ATV mishaps, X-rated massages and bong- and booze-laden shenanigans: that no one, not even a 20-something man-child, lives forever. Keeping the foursome apart means that there is some lag while writers devise silly scenarios to keep our leads if not spiritually, then at least un-carnally occupied.
Szymanski is a veteran of Internet shorts and the Andy Samberg-Kit Harrington mockumentary 7 Days In Hell for HBO. He can stage quick set-pieces like a pro, but his lack of feature experience shows in the film’s lack of scope. Forgetting Sarah Marshall offered a much better look at Hawaii and pre-wedding mishaps; Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers — referenced in this film — may seem dated in comparison to Efron and DeVine, but at least they had more to do.
DeVine (of the Pitch Perfect movies and Comedy Central’s Workaholics) is a reliably manic mess, and Plaza displays a tenable gift for physical comedy. Zefron and Kendrick both bring some sensitivity to their roles — Kendrick as the jilted gal coming to terms with what’s next and Zefron as the hard-partying dude with an existential crisis.
No one is who they seem, which — let’s be honest — is the Achilles heel of social media and millennials in general. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates delivers some decent laughs while spreading the message.
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates opens Friday at Scotiabank and Marine Gateway.
