On the bright side, “Is It Dead?” might be my favorite new fake TV show. On the not-so-bright side, the alligator being wrestled into submission by Will Ferrell wasn’t technically dead; it was animatronic. And obviously animatronic at that.
Comedy is funnier when it’s real, folks. You’d think Will Ferrell would know that one by now. :shrug:
Some of us never learn. And by “some,” I mean “me.” I look at the comic casting Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon and ask, “How bad can it be?” (as if neither actor has made a bomb before) And while the answer is, “Not as bad as it could have been,” there was also part of me that wondered why this film isn’t in theaters. There are good reasons why films don’t come out in theaters, and the best one is, generally, “Because it isn’t very good.”
Jim (Ferrell) and Margot (Witherspoon) are both desperately in love with people about to be taken away from them. Not romantic love, mind you, but platonic, familial love like when you send your child to sleepaway camp for the first time. Many of us have been there. Do those many of us feel the need to film a bad comedy on the spot? No … but many of us have been there.
Single father Jim is losing his only child, Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan) to marriage just as single go-getter Margot is losing her sister and bff Neve (Meredith Hanger) to the same. Well, to marriage that is; Jenni and Neve are not marrying each other. In fact, for a film about a double wedding, the actual married couples are little more than window dressing. The story is about these two wedding planners who can’t get their shit 
together … and they’ve both booked the same one-wedding venue on the same weekend. Uh oh.
Oh, and the venue is a remote island paradise in South Carolina that bills itself as just big enough to host one wedding in a weekend. Because of course it is. In case you’re wondering, this is how the comedy happens: take a bad premise, exaggerate it to a full froth, and collect all the comic resentment on film.
Ok, You’re Cordially Invited is better than that, but not much better. The film gets a lot of mileage out of Margot’s Type-A personality. Her desire to control the proceedings is -of course- compromised by the unforeseen company. Meanwhile, Jim comes off as not only a dad who can’t let go, but one who has a dangerously unhealthy relationship with his adult daughter. No where is this better demonstrated than when the father and daughter duet “Islands in the Stream” at the rehearsal dinner.
“Isn’t that song a little ‘incest-y’ ?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
This is also likely the funniest moment in the film, so if that turns your stomach -and it might- this film ain’t getting’ any better.
You’re Cordially Invited is a throwaway comedy from two very hit-and-miss comedians, Ferrell and writer/director Nicholas Stoller. I absolutely loved Stoller’s last film, Bros, but that wasn’t true of everyone. With You’re Cordially Invited, it seems I’m much more in the pack than on the fringe. If you need this kind of wedding comedy, go find one of the Father of the Brides.
There was once a young bride named Jenni
Whose father wouldn’t give her to any
Reluctantly, he planned
Yet the moment was bagged sand
For instead of one event, there were many
Rated R, 109 Minutes
Director: Nicholas Stoller
Writer: Nicholas Stoller
Genre: Cringe-fest
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: How do you like fake alligators?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Wedding planners
