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Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

Some films strive for a timelessness, aiming for future-classic status through finesse of scriptwriting and performance and visual design. And then there’s Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, a lazy, crass comedy that all but confesses it’s Mr. Right Now, not Mr. Right, by name-checking better films like Jurassic Park and Wedding Crashers.

The Wedding Crashers allusion at least makes sense, as Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates nakedly aspires to the earlier movie’s wedding-themed humor. The new film comes “inspired by the life stories of Mike Stangle and Dave Stangle,” two dumb, profane, mean-spirited, self-obsessed perma-fratboys who once ran a Craiglist ad to get dates for a family wedding. Mock-convinced their story would be “developed into a romantic comedy,” they wrote, “We refuse to let Ashton Kutcher play either of our characters, however, we will consider him for a supporting role.” That comma splice turned out to be prophetic: no Ashton Kutcher to be seen, but rather Adam Devine (Pitch Perfect, Workaholics) as wantonly destructive Mike and Zac Efron as almost-as-boneheaded Dave.

At the outset, Mike and Dave’s parents (Stephen Root and Stephanie Faracy) implore the boys to “grow up,” so as not to ruin another family event with drunken debauchery they intend to impress women. The mandatory solution: secure women before they arrive at the Hawaiian wedding of their sweet sister (Sugar Lyn Beard) to nice guy Eric (Sam Richardson of Veep). Two conniving lowlifes—Anna Kendrick’s Alice and Aubrey Plaza’s Tatiana—answer the call, the joke being that they’re a match made in hell for Mike and Dave, even if they disguise their own walking-disaster status until it’s too late to ditch them.

Yes, they’re meant for each other, and the fact that Mike and Dave will inevitably turn into a rom com blunts its potential as a black comedy of comeuppance for the titular jerks. The lazy script by Andrew Jay Cohen & Brendan O'Brien (the team behind Efron’s Neighbors movies) encourages first-time feature director Jake Szymanski to embrace the juvenile and amp up everything past amusing, past funny, and into grotesque. Devine embodies the approach with his rubbery mugging, while Efron merely looks hot and yells a lot as the ostensible straight man. Plaza and Kendrick wring a few deadpan chuckles, but all around it’s a shame that talented performers (especially the women) are wasted on such dire material.

You’ve seen everything here before, in some form, including the physical punishment doled out on the hapless bride-to-be and the oh-so-naughty sex scene, this time played out between Beard and guest-star Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley), who’s saddled with a guru-esque massage therapist role that trades on racial stereotypes. The ultimate canary in the coal mine: a “say hello to my little friend” joke, which guarantees a film’s creative bankruptcy.