At least all of the actors and hopefully crew got a bit of a
paid vacation.
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates starring Zac Efron, Anna
Kendrick, Adam Devine, Aubrey Plaza and directed by Jake Szymanski. The movie
tells the story of two screw up brothers who need dates for their sister’s
wedding. Their family thinks if they can get the boys to bring nice girls to
the wedding it will calm their antics down. Thus begins the hunt for two nice
girls. They end up finding Anna Kendrick’s and Aubrey Plaza’s characters who
pretend to be nice clean cut girls to get a free trip to Hawaii. Seem
farfetched? Yep it does, but I thought the trailers looked funny and decided to
give the film a chance.
Too bad all of the funny moments were wasted in the
trailers. I laughed out loud a total of two times during the film. When the
moments from the trailer play in the movie I didn’t even crack a smile. Within
the context of the film these scenes were not funny. It could be because I had
seen the trailers so many times that these moments lost their luster. When a
comedy fails to make you laugh that is a major problem for the movie. I just
couldn’t get into the goofy story being told, and I never truly believed any of
the actors were the screw-ups they were portraying.
The actors didn’t do bad jobs with their roles. It is just the story they were put into. Anna
Kendrick stands out the most. We are meant to believe she is a screw up bad
girl, but at the same time getting over a certain life event. They seem to want
us to believe she is the normal Anna Kendrick character, but also a bad girl.
The mesh just doesn’t work. I could never buy into her being the bad girl. I
think Anna Kendrick could pull off this type of role, but they only went half way
with her character in this film. I think it would have been better to let her
play the Aubrey Plaza character in a complete role reversal from the characters
she usually plays. They do the same thing with the Zac Efron character. He is
the more down to earth of the two brothers. Which I guess the writers felt the
script needed, but then when the wacky plot happens you don’t understand why
the down to earth characters act the way they do.
There are also characters that just don’t need to be in the
film. Alice Wetterlund is a total waste in the movie. None of her jokes hit,
and the character adds nothing to the story or comedy. She is a good actress
and again I don’t think it is her fault. The writing for the character is just
bad. When she enters the film it jars to a stop. Maybe they cut many of her
scenes from the final version of the film. They either should have put more
back in to give her character more context or left her out completely. Mary
Holland plays the maid of honor, and I actually wanted more of her character.
She gets lost in the shuffle and I feel she could have actually added something
more to the story.
This film just didn’t have enough of a story to keep you
engaged in the comedy. The movie should have embraced the complete ridiculousness
of the characters and not tried to shoehorn in a standard love story. This or
they should have spent more time developing a better story to be more invested
in the characters. The best comedies either have great characters or story,
without either the film falters. These characters and story overall were
generic and didn’t offer anything to be invested in. The pacing is also slow. I
kept looking at my watch wondering when the film was going to be over. One
other nitpick was the audio in the movie seemed to be off. I felt they should
have had some more ADR for some scenes, because there were parts that the audio
was really quite. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates just isn’t a good movie.
When I first saw the trailers for this movie they got me
excited. I like the entire cast and was hoping this film could be a surprise
summer comedy like Neighbors was a few summers ago. Sadly the generic story and
mashup of characters leave this one as a total dude. I can’t recommend seeing this
film at all. I wouldn’t even recommend stopping to watch it on a cable channel.
It is not worth your time and is Not Worth Seeing. I almost got up and walked
out of the theater, but since I got to see a free early screening of the film I
stuck it out.
Let me know if you are
going to take a chance and see this film. If you have seen it what did you
think, did you think it was as bad as me? Comment and let me know. Let me know
a comedy you went into and were pleasantly surprised by
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