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Wedding Crashers: Uncorked Edition

Review Written by: Will Penley
Film: A-
Video/Audio/Extras: A+/A/A-

Directed by: David Dobkin
Written by: Steve Faber and Bob Fisher
Produced by: Peter Abrams, Robert L. Levy and Andrew Panay
Starring: Owen Wilson, Vince Vaugn, Will Ferrell, Christopher Walken, Rachel McAdams, Isla Fisher, Jane Seymour
Buy it!, Buy it, rent it or skip it: Buy it

"Tattoo on the lower back? Might as well be a bull's-eye."

The infamous "Frat Pack" strikes again with Wedding Crashers, a new comedy featuring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn as two womanizers who have devoted their lives to crashing weddings. The film opened in the summer of 2005 to critical and commercial success, going on to make over two hundred million dollars at the box office. I'm guessing the smell of success is very sweet for the people involved.

John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) are, by profession, divorce mediators, but what most people don't know is that they moonlight as professional wedding crashers who just want to get laid! Guided by a set of rules written by the mysterious Chazz Reinhold (Will Ferrell in a hilarious cameo appearance), the two will crash wedding after wedding, looking for their next score. Jeremy has recently read about a huge wedding coming up, that of the daughter of Secretary of the Treasury William Cleary (Christopher Walken). Reluctantly, John decides to go along with him, but winds up falling for the Secretary's daughter Claire (Rachel McAdams)! Meanwhile, Jeremy is continuously and sometimes violently pursued by Claire's insane sister Gloria (Isla Fisher), who thinks they are meant to be together.

Wedding Crashers opens with a ten-minute montage of the two principals crashing several weddings of different cultures and one of the film's weaknesses is that it is never able to recapture the energy of that montage. At times, the film even stops being a raunchy sex comedy and ventures into romantic comedy territory! Wedding Crashers is a very funny film, but sometimes there are long gaps with no big laughs at all. I think this could be due to the overly-long two-hour running time, something that hindered another great 2005 comedy, The 40 Year Old Virgin. I also think that this film could have just floundered without the comedy talent of the great Vince Vaughn, who plays a character that mirrors his character in Swingers. Even though it could have been funnier, louder (and shorter), I still have to award it an "A-."

New Line has released Wedding Crashers as a part of their "Platinum Series" and they certainly have done a good job with this disc. The anamorphic widescreen transfer is absolutely pristine with nothing -- anything at all -- to be found that might hinder it and the Dolby 5.1 track is also very good. Both the rated and unrated versions of the film have been included and, as always, I recognized no changes from the rated version. However, the running time seems to be longer, so that's the definitive version. If you ask me, these "unrated editions" are always a scam.

There's a bounty of extras on the disc, the best ones being two feature-length audio commentaries. The first features director David Dobkin, who shares loads of information on the making of the film and the second features the film's two stars (this one, of course, being the more amusing track). Two behind-the-scenes featurettes have been included. The first, "Event Planning," which gives us a peek at the work that went into the opening montage and the second, "The Rules," features Wilson and Vaughn talking about "The Rules of Wedding Crashing." You can also access a complete list of these rules via twenty-four text pages. This is followed up with four deleted scenes which can be viewed normally or with optional director's commentary. Of course, these are better left out of the film but are still worth a watch.

Rounding out the disc is a series of trailers and TV spots for the film, sneak peeks at other films from the studio, a track listing for the film's soundtrack and a music video for The Sights' "Circus." Overall, this is a very nice disc and well worth a buy if you're a fan of comedies like me.

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