Don’t just stop at “Wedding Dates.” As presented, Mike and Dave need a lot of things – civility, manners, self-control; you’ve really done an injustice by limiting the titular predicate thusly.
Here’s the deal-io – every year, there’s a raunchy adults-only comedy that is better than the rest, a film taking direct aim at The Hangover grail and fighting missing-tooth and hangnail to get there. This is the film that Everybody Wants Some!!, Dirty Grandpa, and Neighbors 2: Even Neighborer want to be. In 2015, I identified the remake of Vacation as the annual winner in the Hangover rally. As so many told me I was dead wrong in this opinion, I am reluctant to claim Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates as the 2016 champion … but this is a damn funny R-rated film all the same.
Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron, making his good film debut) are liquor sales middlemen. With the expansion of internet commerce, I doubt there’s a need for this profession in 2016, which seems kind of fitting as these guys don’t seem suited for labor of any type. They’re brothers … brothers who ruin family events. Speaking of which, their sister Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard) is getting married and she has but one request of her immature kinfolk: bring wedding dates. To back this request, she has brought her fiancé (Sam Richardson) and their parents to the brothers’ apartment. It’s less like a request and more like an intervention; when relatives come to your crib armed with video of your transgressions, in the very least, you’re probably required to hear them out.
Simply put: Mike and Dave don’t spend a whole lot of time on self-reflection, and thus get carried away with moments. The thought is that maybe if respectable women were attached to them, the two might not “get riled up.” I’m laughing right now thinking about Devine and Efron both vehemently insisting they don’t get riled up – Efron practically foaming at the mouth in the denial. The boys accede to their sister’s request and take out an ad for dates offering a trip to the wedding in Hawaii for the winners. The ad goes viral. Enter the Bad News Pair: Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) and Alice (Anna Kendrick). Hard to say which is worse – Tatiana is the trashy ring leader and Alice is damaged; what is important is that these two, who also lack necessary and survival-instinctive self-reflection personas, are exactly the wrong people to settle Mike and Dave.
There’s no question that Wedding Dates could have been awful – after all, the premise is four overgrown teens ruin a perfectly nice Hawaiian wedding – but the film is funny throughout. It’s funny when Tatiana throws herself in front of a moving vehicle to grab Mike’s attention. It’s funny when Mike’s rivalry with his lesbian cousin (Alice Wetterlund) surfaces. It’s funny when Alice pays off Keanu (Kumail Nanjiani) to give Jeanie the most bizarre happy ending in massage history.
Usually a film like this will pretend t
hat neither idiot is any better than the other. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates make no such pretense; Dave is the better catch and is clearly favored by his parents. I appreciated this touch – in a zany comedy, you don’t expect anything resembling subtle human nature to surface; people are too busy overacting.
There have been two raunchy Zac Efron/Aubrey Plaza comedies in 2016; this is the one to see. Is this a redemption film of sorts? Not sure, but this is Zac Efron’s third R-rated comedy of 2016, establishing a genre unto himself. And if the Pitch Perfect films haven’t done it already, this film will put Adam Devine on the map. I have no doubt there will be a sequel down the road. I doubt very seriously it will rank with the original, but I’ll happily make a game of guessing titles:
- Mike and Dave Need Divorces
- Mike and Dave Need Love
- Mike and Dave Need Nintendo
- Mike and Dave Need Absolution
- Mike and Dave Need Literacy
- Mike and Dave Need Enemas
- Mike and Dave Need Each Other, awwwww
Your turn.
Mike and Dave and their ladies, of course
Create chaos of unyielding force
Rite homicide
But on the bright side
At this rate, there won’t be divorce
Rated R, 98 Minutes
D: Jake Szymanski
W: Andrew Jay Cohen, Brendan O’Brien
Genre: High School date night
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People who decided to give Zac Efron just one more chance
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Book burners
