Wedding Crashers

Plot

John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) are divorce mediators in Washington D.C. who "crash" wedding parties to meet and bed women. At the end of a season of successful crashes, Jeremy takes John to a wedding for the daughter of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, William Cleary (Christopher Walken). Once inside, the pair set their sights on Cleary's other daughters, Gloria (Isla Fisher) and Claire (Rachel McAdams). Jeremy ends up having sex with Gloria on a nearby beach during the reception. Gloria is possessive and quickly becomes obsessed with Jeremy, and Jeremy urges John to escape the reception with him.

Meanwhile, John attempts to court Claire, the maid of honor, but is interrupted by her hotheaded boyfriend, Sack Lodge (Bradley Cooper), who is unfaithful and disrespectful behind her back. When Gloria invites Jeremy and John to an extended weekend party at their family compound, John overrules Jeremy to accept and get closer to Claire.

John and Jeremy become acquainted with the Clearys at their home: the Secretary's wife (Jane Seymour) sexually harasses John; Gloria's brother Todd (Keir O'Donnell) tries to seduce Jeremy during the night; Gloria continues to lavish unwanted sexual attention on Jeremy; and Sack repeatedly injures Jeremy during a game of touch football. At dinner, John spikes Sack's wine with eye-drops to make him sick and get more time to connect with Claire.

John and Claire continue to bond the next day on a sailing trip. The suspicious Sack takes the men on a hunting trip, where Jeremy is shot in the buttocks. While he recovers, John and Claire go on a bike ride to a secluded beach. Claire finally admits she isn't sure how she feels about Sack and ends up kissing John passionately. Meanwhile, Gloria tends to Jeremy's wounds and reveals to him that she is not as innocent or inexperienced as she initially let on. Jeremy realizes that he himself has been played and that he may be in love with Gloria.

Ready to confess everything to Claire to convince her not to marry Sack, John is interrupted by Jeremy being chased out of the house: Sack has investigated and revealed John and Jeremy's identities to the family. Betrayed, Claire turns away from John and the Secretary tells them to leave.

Over the following months, John attempts to reach Claire but she refuses to see him. He attempts to crash Claire and Sack's engagement party but is caught and beaten by Sack. Confronting Jeremy about abandoning him, he learns that Jeremy has secretly continued his relationship with Gloria. Betrayed, John spirals into depression, crashing weddings alone and becoming nihilistic and suicidal. Meanwhile, as Claire and Sack plan their wedding, Claire's doubts grow. Jeremy proposes to Gloria and tries to ask John to be his best man, but a depressed John refuses.

John visits Jeremy's former wedding crashing mentor, Chazz Reinhold (an uncredited Will Ferrell), who convinces him to crash a funeral. While there, he reconsiders his belief in love and marriage and rushes to Jeremy's wedding. John joins the wedding mid-ceremony to Jeremy's delight, but Claire is upset by his appearance, prompting John to profess his love to her and his regret for his past behavior in front of the congregation. Sack interrupts, but Claire finally tells him that she can't marry him. Sack tries to attack John, but Jeremy intervenes to knock him out, and John and Claire kiss.

After the wedding, the two couples drive away from the ceremony together, discussing crashing another wedding together, apparently skipping Jeremy's own wedding reception.

Cast

Arizona Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Democratic strategist and CNN contributor James Carville both have a brief cameo appearance in the film towards the beginning, where both are seen congratulating the secretary and his wife on their daughter's wedding.

Production

The film was written by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher and produced through New Line Cinema, with shooting taking place on location in Washington, D.C. and Maryland's Eastern Shore. Principal photography began on March 22, 2004 and the movie had a 52-day shooting schedule. The main Cleary wedding reception scene was filmed at the Inn at Perry Cabin in Saint Michaels, Maryland.

Dobkin has said that the script originally set the film around Cape Cod, but a need to film in spring made this impractical. He suggested moving the shoot to Washington, his home town, feeling that his knowledge of the area would make choosing locations easier, and that using the city as the setting for a comedy would be an unexpected choice.

Critical response

Wedding Crashers received generally positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 75%, based on 182 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Wedding Crashers is both raunchy and sweet, and features top-notch comic performances from Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson." On Metacritic the film has a score of 64 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times wrote a favorable review and said "underneath the diarrhea gags, the long lens at close range of Vaughn's pants and the handcuffs, it's really just a love story about a couple of buddies who live happily ever after. And it couldn't have happened to a nicer, more charming couple". Manohla Dargis of the New York Times said "It's crude, yes, but also funny; too bad these lost boys can't stay lost. Like clockwork, the film soon mutates from a guy-oriented sex comedy into a wish-fulfillment chick flick".

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two stars out of four; although he wrote that "there are individual moments that are very funny" he added that the director, David Dobkin, "has too much else on his mind". British Movie magazine Empire awarded it three out of five stars and were complimentary to Vaughn and Wilson, saying "Sharing an easy chemistry and free of the usual joker/straight-guy dynamic, Wilson and Vaughn quip, riff and banter to hilarious effect. And both get their fair share of money moments, the latter’s muggings are particularly hysterical in a raunchy dinner-party sequence, The laidback stars are funny and sweet, but they’re let down by a patchy script which squanders some potentially priceless set-ups."

Box office

The film was released in North America on July 15, 2005, and became an immediate hit, grossing $33,900,720 in its first weekend, hitting #2 in the box office, behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Fairly well received by critics, the film eventually grossed over $209,255,921 domestically, narrowly outgrossing Charlie. Considering its modest budget ($40 million) and competition with heavily advertised blockbusters during the summer season, the studio did not expect the movie's astounding level of success. It grossed $75,920,820 overseas, totaling $285,176,741 worldwide.

Accolades

On April 24, 2006, Wedding Crashers topped the nominations for the year's MTV Movie Awards with five including Best Movie. It won Best Movie, On-Screen Team (Vaughn and Wilson), and Breakthrough Performance (Isla Fisher). The financial and award success of the film has been credited along with The 40-Year-Old Virgin for reviving the popularity of adult-aimed R-rated comedies.

Bradley Cooper was mentioned in the August 2006 issue of GQ as one of "The Top Twelve Movie Dicks".

Home media

The DVD was released in the United States on January 3, 2006, and a Blu-ray was released on December 30, 2008. It is available in an unrated version ("Uncorked Edition") and in an R-rated version (the Blu-ray has both versions on one disc). It features eight new minutes integrated into the film and DVD-ROM bonuses. Also included are two audio commentaries (one by the stars, one by the director), four deleted scenes, two featurettes, a "Rules of Wedding Crashing" text gallery, trailers, Budweiser Wedding Crashers commercials, a track listing for the official soundtrack on 20th Century Fox Records, a music video by The Sights, and a jump-to-a-song sample feature.

Television version

The creators of the film made a reality TV version, called The Real Wedding Crashers and shown on NBC in April and May 2007. NBC only showed four episodes.

Discussed sequel

In a 2014 post on the website Quora, Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin said that he, Vaughn and Wilson once came up with an idea for a sequel in which John and Jeremy find themselves competing with a superior wedding crasher, played by Daniel Craig; but that this idea never went beyond the discussion phase.

The 2013 film The Internship, which also starred Vaughn and Wilson, was sometimes described by critics as an unofficial sequel to Wedding Crashers.

In November 2016, Fisher was a guest on The Today Show and while talking about Nocturnal Animals, she revealed from her Wedding Crashers co-star Vaughn that a sequel is in the works.