Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016)
This movie had all the hallmarks of a movie I would enjoy watching on a plane, by which I mean that Zac Efron is in it. Sadly, unlike most of the Fun Garbage I’ve watched recently (I'll post another Zac Efron Fun Garbage review soon), this movie just kind of made me angry.
It felt like way someone had an idea for a movie - two man-children try getting respectable wedding dates by way of national advertising, and they turn out to be just as terrible - but whoever had that idea forgot to flesh any of it out or plan any jokes. It had maybe a couple of moments I giggled at? I'm being generous. There’s a canonically, openly bisexual character (I’m not totally into bisexuality being automatically conflated with promiscuity thing but baby steps)! I didn’t think the performances were great - disappointingly, even normally decent actors felt sluggish - and overall, I found the whole movie quite irritating and immature. Adam Devine was at peak obnoxiousness and very few people didn't feel obnoxious - Anna Kendrick was grating deeply on my nerves. It’s not automatically bad to be silly, but there’s got to at least be something in the way you tell it that hooks me.
Look, it’s bad when even Sleeping Pill Addled Sara can’t mute the angry feminism for five minutes on a plane. I’m always really hyped at movies and shows that let women be gross and unpolished, so I was thankful for that and had high hopes for this movie on that front. I was not so into the whole good girl/bad girl bullshit the movie constantly buys into and the focus on female respectability. If you’re actively saying the dichotomy is fake then I can get on board, and at times I felt like the movie was almost doing that, but most of the time it was not getting there. You’re not making fun of the thing, you’re just being the thing. I don’t know, I have a lot of thoughts and I’m not going to start my essay on the character of Cousin Terry, but just know that this movie didn’t manage to be Fun Garbage to me and instead came down quite solidly as irritating and superficial and never really managed to expand on any of the ideas it brought up.
Rating: 2.5/10 - and the points are basically for bisexuality, Zac Efron and allowing women to be gross and also have orgasms onscreen.
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