Jul 15, 2005 7:00 am US/Central
The Wedding Crashers
Richard Roeper: "See It"
(CBS)
There have been a lot of Vince Vaughn sightings in Chicago this summer as he films "The Break-Up" with Jennifer Aniston. And Vaughn's star is only going to rise with his breakout starring performance in the year's funniest movie to date, "The Wedding Crashers."
This is the kind of movie Bill Murray and Danny Aykroyd would have done 20 years ago. "The Wedding Crashers" is raunchy, sexy, offensive and relentlessly funny, thanks to a clever premise, a funny script and the signature styles of two of our best comedic actors: Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.
If these guys just crashed wedding after wedding and got lucky with chickie after chickie, "Wedding Crashers" would have been hilarious but unmemorable. To match great comedies like "Ghostbusters" and "Stripes" and even "Animal House," you've got to have a worthy villain...some eccentric supporting characters...and a romance that's played at least
somewhat realistically.
That's Rachel McAdams, who was so lovely in "The Notebook." I think she's on the cusp of major stardom.
And Christopher Walken as the Secretary of the Treasury only bolsters my Walken Theory of Moviegoing: any film with this guy, even "Gigli," isn't totally unwatchable.
As Vaughn and Wilson come to question their wedding crasher ways and ponder if there's more to life, they have some scenes together that are instant classics. Vaughn in particular speaks with such a unique rhythm and he tosses out so many brilliant asides that you know he has to be ad-libbing at times.
"Wedding Crashers" is rated R for gratuitous nudity and lots of colorful language, but even that's refreshing. I'm tired of supposedly outrageous comedies that play it safe by going for the PG-13. I haven't laughed this often at a movie in a long, long time.
See It.
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