Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016)

Review

98min

Genre:      Comedy, Romance

Director:   Jake Szymanski

Cast:        Zac Efron, Adam Devine, Anna Kendrick…and more

Writers:    Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien

-Synopsis-

When party animals the “Stangle Brothers” are shamed into finding respectable dates for their sister’s Hawaiian wedding, they attract the attention of a couple of girls that could give them a run for their money, but who decide to play the part and get a free vacation in this irreverent comedy featuring some of Hollywood’s hottest young stars.

For his debut feature film, TV and comedy short director Jake Szymanski teams up with the writing team behind 2014’s ‘Bad Neighbours’ to bring us an irreverent screwball comedy which follows the formula of many a recent lewd comedy. But much like Dan Mazer’s ‘Dirty Grandpa’ from earlier this year, ‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates’ wilfully crosses the line between silly and just plain stupid, whilst planting a flag deep in unfunny territory.

Zac Efron and Adam Devine star as slightly dim-witted and self-obsessed “party-boy” brothers, whose record of ruining family occasions is put in jeopardy when they are forced to bring suitable dates to their beloved sister’s wedding.

Devine let’s his exuberant but exhausting personality run wild while Efron sets his six-pack free; meanwhile Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza deliver a slightly cringeworthy attempt at damaged bad-girls with a heart, and that’s about the sum total of the actor contribution to the film… but to be fair they didn’t have much to work with in the first place.

To say that ‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates’ is derivative would be an understatement; borrowing from virtually every irreverent comedy from the last couple of decades, it essentially amounts to a cross between ‘Meet the Parents’, ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ and ‘Bad Neighbours’. But that would be far less of an issue if it were at all consistently, let alone occasionally funny.

Szymanski tries to blend slapstick with lewd comedy and a measure of predictable sentimentality, not to mention crowbarring in incessant movie references with the minimum of tact and creativity; but the result is not even silly funny, just infantile and stupid but most of all, apart from one laugh-out-loud scene involving inappropriate massaging, just not funny at all… and the fact that it tries so hard just makes it worse.

Comedy is no doubt one of the most subjective of art forms and almost entirely a matter of taste, but we find it hard to see how anyone over the age of 16 might find  ‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates’  a rip-roaring whale of a time; and after ‘Dirty Grandpa’, star Zac Efron has some way to go and better choices to make to convince us he’s anything more than a teen heartthrob.

The Bottom Line…

A lewd and crude comedy whose only shock value comes in an almost complete lack of genuine laughs; ‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates’ leaps over the line between silly and stupid  on the way to becoming a crass derivative comedy with few redeemable qualities, it may not be the worst film of the year so far but it puts up a fight for it.

Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

A heartbroken man goes on a solo Hawaiian vacation to forget about his celebrity ex-girlfriend, only to find she’s vacationing in the same place with her new rockstar boyfriend in the smash-hit irreverent comedy which launched several movie careers.

Directed by Nicholas Stoller and starring Jason Segel, Kristen Bell and Russell Brand among others.

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