Wedding Crashers offers a little romance, a lot of raunch.
By Cheryl Eddy

FORGET FRANK, Sammy, and Dean – and Emilio, Judd, and Molly. Currently, Hollywood's most pervasive battalion of actors who really, really enjoy working together are the good-natured jerks populating flicks like Zoolander, Starsky and Hutch, Old School, Meet the Parents, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, plus a few artier diversions, like The Royal Tenenbaums. The so-called Frat Pack – which passes "Go" at Ben Stiller and also includes brothers Luke and Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and the occasional Jack Black sighting – pleases studios and fans alike (if not always critics), supplying cash flow (Dodgeball turned a nearly $100 million profit) and quotable lines galore.

Anyone suffering from too-much-Stiller-itis (and seriously, who isn't?) will be happy to learn the ubiquitous workaholic is absent from the pack's latest project, Wedding Crashers. Instead, we get Owen Wilson and Vaughn as Washington, DC, divorce mediators John Beckwith and Jeremy Klein, best buds who live for "wedding season": that magical time of year filled with free drinks and eager, easy female targets. An early montage – set to the Animal House anthem "Shout" – illustrates the elaborate inner workings of the crashing game. Props (yarmulkes, balloon animals, Purple Heart medals) are employed with relish; names and backstories are tailored to fit the style and ethnicity of the wedding being invaded. The easiest part of the con is the seduction routine, which involves slow dancing, a sob story that trails off with "We lost a lot of really good men out there," and maybe a few phony tears.

With the Washington Monument – surely the tallest phallic symbol in America – looming conspicuously in the background, John and Jeremy pause to commemorate "a helluva season." Conflict arises when John begins to regret his sleazy, playboy ways – though he allows Jeremy to talk him into crashing "the Kentucky Derby of weddings," a high-society affair where the father of the bride is US treasury secretary William Cleary (Christopher Walken). Further conflict presents itself when John falls for the maid of honor, Claire Cleary (Rachel McAdams) – and Jeremy becomes trapped by his all-too-successful wooing of Claire's nutty sister, bridesmaid Gloria (Isla Fisher).

Of course, Claire is already taken, and her aggro fiancé, Sack (Bradley Cooper), is cut from the same Mr. Wrong cloth as the guy Drew Barrymore was supposed to marry in The Wedding Singer. (The two Wedding films share other similarities, including eightysomething actor Ellen Albertini Dow: In Singer, she was the rappin' granny; here, she's the cussin' granny). As with most romantic comedies, Wedding Crashers' plot throws zero curveballs; of course Claire and John are Meant to Be, though circumstances conspire to keep them apart. Lesser Cleary family members, including Jane Seymour as the boozy matriarch and Keir O'Donnell as the twitchy, closeted brother, are one-note and not as hilarious as director David Dobkin (Shanghai Knights) seems to think they are. Even the reliably creepy Walken is oddly subdued, though his withering stare gets at least one chuckle-worthy workout.

Frat Pack bros Wilson and Vaughn make for an enjoyable, comfortable comedy team, though Vaughn, talking faster than a used-car salesman on speed, gets almost all the funniest lines ("That chick just eye-fucked the shit out of me!"). While its conceit is, obviously, totally sexist, Wedding Crashers finds a sort of balance in its female leads. Fisher (Scooby-Doo) is adorably terrifying as Jeremy's worst nightmare, a clingy sex maniac with psychotic tendencies. The strange arc of Gloria and Jeremy's relationship provides one of Wedding Crashers' few unexpected twists – shocking nobody more than John, who goes into a downward spiral after Claire discovers his true identity as a party-crashing lothario (we know he's regretful, so we excuse him for the most part – but she doesn't).

Still a relative newcomer, McAdams (Mean Girls, The Notebook) lends all the blue-streak goings-on a much-needed dose of – dignity might not be the right word, considering the film's determined pursuit of raunchiness, but maybe sweetness is. Though it's hard to understand why Claire, who's clearly no self-doubting dummy, would get engaged to anyone as odious as Sack, it's easy to see why John would dig her. She's like a preppier version of cool girl Cameron Diaz in There's Something About Mary, minus the bodily fluids in her hair, and with more depth behind her eyes.

'Wedding Crashers' opens Fri/15 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock for show times.