Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
Director: Jake Szymanski
Writers: Andrew Jay Cohen, Brendan O’Brien
Stars: Zac Efron, Adam Devine, Anna Kendrick
Duration: 98 mins
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd

Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave’s (Zac Efron) younger sister, Jeanie Stangle (Sugar Lyn Beard), is getting married. Given the brothers’ penchant for causing all sorts of disasters at family dos, they are ordered by their parents (Stephanie Faracy and Stephen Root) to bring respectable dates to the wedding, which is taking place in Hawaii.

So the two put out an ad on Craigslist, which is answered by many women; but the brothers choose best friends, Alice (Anna Kendrick) and Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza)… who, it transpires, are anything but the sweet, harmless, nice girls they pretend to be.

Why the Stangle parents believe that bringing dates (or in this case, random strangers) to a wedding should result in proper behaviour from their highly immature sons is never explained.

What saves the film from being yet another ‘bromantic’ comedy in which adult males refuse to grow up and the women are mere props (which, from the premise seems to be their only true function here – and the camera does ogle them a bit too much) is the fact that the women in question are almost equally as bad in their behaviour. And, quite frankly, they very easily steal the show in the process.

That you don’t completely dislike the characters is down to the performances of the main ones

If the premise sounds a little shallow, you may be intrigued to know that Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is actually based on a true story (sort of). And that the real Stangle brothers actually did take out an ad in which they describe themselves as “in our 20s, single, dashingly tall, Anglo-Saxon, respectfully athletic, love to party, completely house-trained, relaxed, passionate, smell great, have cool hair, clean up nice, boast great tie collections, will promise to shave, love our mother, have seen Love Actually several times, controversial, provocative, short-sighted (with a big picture mentality), raw, emotional, sensitive but still bad boys...” Hardly surprising the response was so overwhelming…

This being America (well, that being America…) the ad made the news, the boys went on to write a book, and a movie deal followed. However, as penned by Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien, the resultant brothers do not quite fit the above description. The boyish charm inferred from the above advert is substituted with the sort of specimen that normally populates this kind of movie – one-dimensional frat boy types that fall into the trap of clichéd sex, drug, and alcohol-based humour, foul language, and a series of raunchy gags in place of a narrative.

There are moments of sporadic humour – I admit I laughed when a stunt with a quad bike in the lush park where the Jurassic Park movie was set goes horribly wrong. The brothers’ lesbian cousin Terry’s flirting with Tatiana, although at times rather graphic, does raise a giggle. But many of the other gags just fall flat and, a scene where Jeanie gets a massage with a ‘happy ending’, does go on way too long.

That you don’t completely dislike the characters is down to the performances of the main ones, especially Efron, Kendrick and Plaza, who mine as much as they can from the material. Efron has successfully moved away from the teen movies that made his name via some solid dramatic roles.

Thanks to the two Bad Neighbours movies he has shown some considerable comedy chops, while still pandering to the audience that made his name by, as per usual, removing his shirt at a couple of points.

He shares some perfect chemistry with Kendrick, who raises much of the giggles with her lovelorn Alice, who is still suffering the after effects of being jilted at the altar and drowns her sorrows by consuming copious amounts of alcohol and engaging in kooky and bizarre behaviour.

Aubrey Plaza is a revelation. Her Tatiana is droll, dry and deadly in attitude and performance. She gives as good as she gets and easily walks away with most scenes she is in. Of the foursome, the weakest link is Adam Devine’s Mike, saddled with the typical arrested development 20-something role whose performance adds up to little more than mugging at the camera.

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