Where: Theaters everywhere.
When: Opens today.
Rating: R for sexual content/nudity and language.
Running time: 119 minutes.
Bottom line: Sex, violence, buddies and boobs - and laughs. What more could a guy ask of romance?
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There's a reason romantic comedies are called "chick flicks." It's because men don't like them.
Like "Hitch" earlier this year, "Wedding Crashers" tries to make the genre appealing to guys. But it's not aiming for sensitive, metrosexual men: This is romantic comedy for frat boys.
It's stupid, sexist, juvenile, profane and amply deserves its R rating - and it's funny.
There are girls in this movie, but as in most guy-buddy comedies, they exist only as one-dimensional sexual conquests or causes of trouble for the poor men - at least until the men meet women they actually (gasp!) like as people.
Even then, the romance barely gets in the way of a quick succession of stupid jokes that are often so bad they're good.
Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play John and Jeremy, who conduct divorce arbitration by day and stealth invasions of strangers' weddings by night. Good food, open bars, chances to make speeches in front of people they'll never meet again, and lots of dolled-up single women feeling a bit desperate to find a man, at least for a night. What could be better?
But a fateful society wedding introduces the pair to a highly eccentric blue-blood family headed by Secretary of the Treasury William Cleary (Christopher Walken). One daughter has just married, leaving two single ones for our heroes. John, already tiring of the wedding-bedding game, finds himself in love at first sight with the lovely Claire (Rachel McAdams, giving the movie a good heart it doesn't deserve), and persuades Jeremy to stay around an extra few days to see where it goes.
Wilson and Vaughn play off each other in rapid-fire banter and heartwarming heterosexual guy love. But Vaughn steals the show as a dude who starts out as the world's biggest womanizer - and loves to philosophize about it - but meets his match in a psycho bridesmaid.
Director David Dobkin ("Shanghai Nights") would have done well to cut out about 20 slow minutes near the end of the film. (It is a romantic comedy. We know what's going to happen. Get it done.) And the humor is gutter level. But at least it can be original. You'll laugh, though you might be embarrassed about it. And in these humorless times (in reality and at this summer's movies), I'll take a laugh anywhere I can get it.
ckarras@sltrib.com


