The Wedding Ringer (2015)

This script has to have been written by an 8 year old. Both actors are generally very funny in other roles, but this is an abomination. The most far fetched unrealistic scenarios(with nothing funny to redeem them) the bachelor party, random other wedding events outside of the main plot and the closing airplane scene are just 3 examples of scenes written by writers who have never walked the earth as adults.Ridiculous and far fetched are just fine when they are funny, There is nothing funny about this movie.Avoid at all costs.

It shows something that it is quite common but not often talked about. When we enter adulthood your friends start to lessen and lessen and it perfectly normal. If you had childhood friends and you or they move out those connections are gone. If you had university friends and they or you start working somewhere far away those connections are gonna as well. And we all know that colleagues are often not your friends. So it is not always the easier thing to have a lot of friends (as portrayed in many movies). Those who do are the lucky ones. This movie shows to however feels like a loser for not having a lot of friends that they are not alone. That is a message that I liked about the movie. What I did not like is that in the end the movie turns exactly like any other one that portrays that a winner is the one that has a large group of friends and does high school craziness with them. It contradicts its message in a big way. The movie is funny and I would expect nothing less from a Kevin Hart movie. Josh Gad however, did not impress me at all.

"The Wedding Ringer" is another modern comedy that tries to have it both ways. It goes for gross-out, outrageous humour, referencing topics like child abuse and zoophilia, but also tries for moments of soppiness. It gets neither, perhaps because the script is just so clichéd and yet poorly assembled that it seems to lurch from one familiar moment to the next. It's like the movie has a split personality, one good, one evil, both exhausted.The movie opens with the suave, charming pretend best man played by Kevin Hart (is he the "Wedding Ringer" of the title? What is a "wedding ringer"?) killing it in his role as a best friend for hire, fooling everyone with a marvelous speech. The guy who hired him thinks they might actually be friends, but no! Hart is a cold S.O.B. who is only in it for the money. But could he possibly have a heart (no pun intended) after all? Anyway, our hero tracks him down to employ his services as a best man for his own wedding - he's an average looking fat guy with no friends who has improbably convinced some blonde babe to marry him: Kaley Cuoco, who has made a career of playing the blonde babe with an improbable connection to quirky geeks and misfits.If you aren't clichéd out by now, it gets worse: Kevin Hart doesn't want take the job! He laughs in the hero's face!Just once I would like to see a movie which begins with someone being offered a job and them accepting it. Why do they ALWAYS have to turn it down at first? Of course, something happens - who cares what, it's so trite you stop paying attention - to make Hart change his mind.Then we get obligatory scenes of Hart and the loser hero - Josh Gad, I think the actor who plays him is called - rehearsing for their pretend friendship. In a wiser comedy, this material could actually be poignant and truthful, but of course it just goes for silly montages showing ridiculous ways of faking photos to convince people they have a history.The movie gets more than a little weird in its reliance on cliché when Hart has to assemble a group of groomsmen who will also pretend to be the loser hero's friends, and exclusively chooses weirdos. Why would someone as gifted at the con as Hart's character is shoot himself in the foot so ridiculously by choosing his partners in crime so poorly? They look like they're not even from the same universe as him. I fear, reader, it is because believable conmen like Hart's character would become a bit creepy if we saw them fool everybody to that extent. Not to be - we need easy laughs, again, to distract from the essential sadness of the movie's premise, that some people don't have friends and have to buy them to avoid embarrassment. We don't get those laughs, but never mind. If the movie didn't lose me here, the "Bachelor Party"/"Hangover Part Twelve" scene that came soon after did. We needed the gross out, and the graphic male nudity, so we get a party which spirals out of control and, wouldn't you know it, all the freaky groomsmen's weirdness comes in handy after all, as if this were a kids' movie circa 1994, trying to teach us to value the individuality of people.Or, you know, perhaps the filmmakers just ran out of grown up movie clichés and started ripping off "The Mighty Ducks". There is also an obligatory sports scene, with quick editing of people getting rammed into, falling over, getting muddy... and then the heroes winning, despite the presence of the 6'10" Ed "Too Tall" Jones, a football hero in real life, and another guy who's 6'6". They could have made this scene at least halfway believable by casting average guys. What was the point of making the opposite team actual NFL retirees? You know how it's going to end between Hart & Gad. What may be harder to believe is that they try for a sweet moment after some of the other garbage the movie contains. It veers between gross out and glucose to quickly it could give you whiplash. Hart does have a few funny moments though. As with "Get Hard", he is the only thing about this movie that works.

The Wedding Ringer is not a "knock your socks off comedy" but it is capable of standing up against any of the premiere comedies of the past decade. I would compare it to the same comedy vein as The Wedding Crashers, The Break-Up, and/or Bridesmaids. What I really enjoyed was every scene that Kevin Hart and/or Kaley Cuoco were slotted in because they are just so naturally impressive comedic actors. Kevin Hart plays the "Have great speech for hire Best Man" who knows how to impress a groom's newlywed wife and mother-in-law since everyone knows a wedding is always focused on the bride and the bride's mother. Make them happy and everyone will think the groom is wonderful! Kaley Cuoco plays Gretchen Palmer the needy and soon to be rich wife of a faceless and nerdy successful lawyer whose father owns the firm he works at. I would have to say though that I dropped my rating of this film for the selection of Josh Gad as the friendLESS groom Doug Harris. I would have loved to see the deceased John Candy in this lead role but due to his death making him unavailable I really think Kevin James, Matthew Broderick, Luke Wilson or even Woody Harrelson would have been much better casted as the hapless groom than Josh Gad was. In my view Josh just does not possess that "IT" comedy factor that raises the bar throughout a comedy film. Instead the director Jeremy Garelick (who also is credited for the writing of the screenplay) stooped to lowering the comedy bar by utilizing the old gag of having a dog lick peanut butter from the grooms privates as he is blindfolded and assuming a very pretty Russian woman is doing the gorging on his peanut butter balls. The last 20 minutes of a film can sometimes make or break a film and fortunately for the producers of this film The Wdding Ringers ended on a high note with a much needed Feel-Good ending. Sprinkled throughout the film are great supporting roles such as Jennifer Lewis (who currently plays Grandma on the hit comedy series Blackish), Cloris Leachman the tireless actress who is enjoying her eighth decade of outstanding film performances, Ken Howard, Jorge Garcia, and even cameo appearances by NFL Hall of Famers QB Joe Namath, DE Too Tall Ed Jones, and RB John Riggins engaged in a riotous game of mud football against the groom and his band of hired groomsmen.All in all this is a light hearted and fun film that Mrs. Shullivan and I both enjoyed. As any wife will tell you, who doesn't enjoy a light hearted wedding theme comedy? I give Wedding Ringer's a 7 out of 10 rating. It is well worth the watch.