Don’t you just HATE it when you are watching a fantastic movie, a comedy, and laughing your ass off, and then out of nowhere the movie just stops being funny?  I hate it when that happens. And of course, the movie I am referring to is “Wedding Crashers,” the latest victim of this syndrome. The first 90 minutes was nearly brilliant, but the last half-hour did its best to ruin the whole thing!

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play Jeremy and John, two co-workers and lifelong friends. They are divorce mediators by profession, and as a result, have a dim view of marriage and commitment. But being divorce mediators isn’t their true claim-to-fame. What makes them special is this great girl-catching gimmick they have mastered: they crash weddings. Weddings, we are told, bring out a lot of hot women, the ceremonies get them all romantic, and the parties afterward lessen their inhibitions. With the right cover story (“We’re Uncle Ned’s kids”, “We went to college with Sanjay”, etc.) and a well-honed ability to fit in with any crowd, they spend every weekend attending weddings to which they were not invited: eating free food, drinking free booze, and sleeping with female wedding guests.  

So the pair sets their eyes on the wedding event of the season, as one of the daughters of US Treasury Secretary William Cleary (Christopher Walken) is getting married! Crashing this would be like a bank robber crashing Fort Knox. The boys do it, but they hit snags. Jeremy hooks up with the bride’s younger sister Gloria (Isla Fisher), who turns out to be a “clinger,” a virginal nutcase who thinks this means Jeremy wants to marry her. And John gets in over his head when he falls for Gloria’s other single sister Claire (the very-cute Rachel McAdams), who already has a boyfriend (played by

Bradley Cooper).  Now that the boys have integrated themselves into the Cleary clan, they get themselves invited back to the family compound for an exclusive post-wedding party. Jeremy wants to exit fast, but John clearly needs more time with Claire to win her over. The storyline for the midsection of the movie centers on the eccentricities and/or oddities of the Cleary family members, who appear Kennedy-esque only much more hard-core.

Vaughn and Wilson are perfectly cast in their roles, and this movie is terrifically funny up to this point. I mean, fantastically funny. The problem is, the movie doesn’t end there. The entire last act, the last 30 minutes of the movie, is unnecessary, dragging the story along slowly and painfully to its obvious conclusion. The screenplay itself, by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher, should have been reworked long before it was filmed. The movie becomes considerably less funny from here, as they dwell on the rift between John and Claire (after her inevitable discovery of his lies), and then between John and Jeremy. What were they thinking? We don’t want to see that!

In spite of this, the “Wedding Crashers” is still funny enough to warrant a viewing. But if you can, best to turn it off 90 minutes in, and use your imagination as to how the movie might end.