Wedding Crashers (Blu-ray)

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Maybe it just seems as though Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn have been around in movies forever, but, in fact, they both got their start in the late Eighties and Nineties, which isn't that long ago. Yet it's been long enough for each of the actors to have established a definite screen persona. Wilson is forever the amiable, good-natured, slow-talking, universal nice guy, and Vaughn is most often the glib, fast-talking, semi con man. The romantic comedy "Wedding Crashers" from 2005 pairs them up well in what is undoubtedly one of the best starring vehicles for both men.

Just to keep the record straight before continuing, you might be aware that Wilson and Vaughn worked together previously in "Starsky & Hutch" and "Zoolander"; that Vaughn worked with Wilson's brother Luke in "Old School"; and that the director of "Wedding Crashers," David Dobkin, worked with Wilson previously in "Shanghai Knights" and with Vaughn in "Clay Pigeons." I've probably overlooked some other connections, but you get the idea. Everyone in Hollywood is related.

All genre flicks need an angle, something to differentiate them from the rest of the crowd, so this romantic comedy uses the buddy-movie approach. The film works as a sort of double romantic comedy with both Wilson and Vaughn getting into the romance picture. You get two for the price of one, so to speak, and in this case more is actually better. The buddy angle pays off.

Wilson and Vaughn play a pair of divorce lawyers in Washington, D.C., who get their kicks crashing weddings on weekends and picking up girls. That they are both pushing forty and getting much too old for this kind of immature tomfoolery doesn't seem to register on Vaughn's character, Jeremy Grey, the more cynical of the two, but it's clearly beginning to wear on Wilson's more sensitive character, John Beckworth. Nor do either of them seem to worry that all the girls they bed down appear to be about half their age; but I suppose the idea of leading men cast alongside much younger women is too much of a time-honored tradition in Hollywood to set aside.

Anyway, all is going along swimmingly for the two guys until they crash a posh wedding for the daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury, William Cleary (Christopher Walken). How posh? John McCain and James Carville play themselves as guests. Here, each of the fellows becomes more involved with a girl than he expected. John falls for the Secretary's daughter, Claire (Rachel McAdams), and Jeremy becomes rather fond of Claire's sister, Gloria (Isla Fisher). The trouble is that Claire's already got a boyfriend, and Gloria is so clinging that it scares Jeremy.

The first third of the film, where the two buddies are crashing weddings, is the most fun. They use humorously corny pickup lines, they maintain notoriously low scruples, and they're always the life of the party even when they don't know a soul there. When the movie settles into their serious romantic conflicts, however, the momentum slows, the laughs come fewer and farther between, and the story winds up overstaying its welcome. There is also the problem that the movie creates a stronger chemistry between the two best buddies than between the buddies and their girlfriends, which can put a real damper on the "romantic" aspect of any romantic comedy.

Additionally, the scriptwriters, Steve Faber and Bob Fisher, resort to "goofy" family clichés in depicting the Secretary's immediate household. The eccentric-family gimmick has been around since the beginning of movies ("You Can't Take It With You," 1938, is one of the most-entertaining examples), but it doesn't stop Faber and Fisher from dredging it up once again. For instance, we meet grandma Cleary (Ellen Albertini Dow), a feisty, senile old bat; the Secretary's son, Todd (Keir O'Donnell), an angry, certified wacko; and the Secretary's wife, Kathleen (Jane Seymour), who makes Mrs. Robinson's behavior in "The Graduate" seem restrained.