Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates - movie review
Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates
Plot: Two hard-partying brothers place an online ad to find the perfect dates for their sister's Hawaiian wedding. Hoping for a wild getaway, the boys instead find themselves out-hustled by an uncontrollable duo.
Cast: Zac Efron, Adam Devine, Anna Kendrick
Director: Jake Szymanski
Rating: 15 (strong sex references, drugs misuse, strong language)
Runtime: 1hr 38 mins
Release Date: Wednesday 10th August 2016
Regardless of how good or bad this film is, one thing is for certain; I want to go to a Mike and Dave party. I don't care about the destruction they cause or the various injuries maybe even loss of life. Their parties look mental. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is the newest madcap comedy and centres on a real life story (yes this is actually based on true events) of two brothers who need good and respectful girls to take to their sister's wedding. And that's the plot. That really is all there is to it. No further explanation needed. The title could not be more self explanatory. It's like calling 'The Avengers' 'Superheroes Team Up To Stop Loki'.
This year's been pretty packed for Zac Efron. Early in January he starred in the controversial comedy 'Dirty Grandpa' which I actually liked, then reprised his role in 'Bad Neighbours 2' which was great fun, he's in a comedy later in the year called 'The Masterpiece' about how The Room was made. He's even got a hectic year in 2017 with Baywatch as well. But with that many films under his belt, you're bound to have a couple that miss rather than hit. Mike and Dave is the miss that Efron's runs into. He plays Dave in the pair and acts as the more grounded brother with a plan for his life but still goes crazy at parties. Efron's pretty funny and enjoyable to watch in this role but it's just that I've seen him in better. What made him great in the other two movies earlier in the year was that he knew how to deliver funny dialogue. Here, because the dialogue just didn't have that spark, it seems like Efron is shuffling his way to the end so he can move on to the next project. He does hit some moments and in a couple cases, hits a homerun but they are too few and far between. As Mike to Efron's Dave is the immensely talented Adam Devine. He's a comedian that I feel is very underappreciated. Devine is brilliant in shows like Modern Family and Workaholics but steals the show in films such as Pitch Perfect 1 and 2. So if you haven't gathered, I'm a fan of Adam Devine. Therefore it pains me to say that I wasn't overly impressed with his performance. For a film based on a real circumstance, Devine treats the film as a cartoon. In his defence, practically the whole film begins to develop into a cartoon but Devine stood out to me as the one who never found to give me the jokes as well as a real character. Both him and Efron have good chemistry and I could believe they were brothers but I've seen Devine do better than this.
Whilst Efron and Devine can perform these sort of roles in their sleep, it was Anna Kendrick who impressed me the most by stepping out of her comfort zone and playing a wild chick. You've seen her be the quiet unassuming girl in Pitch Perfect but I could tell that Kendrick was able to let loose in this role and it shows. This film didn't give me the consistent laughs that I was hoping for but those intermittent laughs mostly came from Kendrick. She is bonkers, a pain in everyone's ass but hilarious to watch. There is a great scene involving her, Mike and Dave's sister, horses and ecstasy. I'll leave it at that. Even though she is the craziest of the cast, the writers also make her the most human which is a tall order in a film full of cartoon characters. It's like adding David Attenborough in Looney Tunes. She's given a genuine backstory that actually serves a purpose to her character and the progress of the film. Plus, it was funny. Joining Anna Kendrick as the girls from hell is someone who has proven that she can be a bad bitch if she wants to, Aubrey Plaza. I thought she was a little annoying in Dirty Grandpa but that's because they played up the slut act too much. In Mike and Dave, she certainly still retains her foul mouth and does things that will make your Grandmother pray to God and Jesus to cleanse your soul but I'd be lying if I said that she didn't make me laugh. I was worried that Mike and Dave would be the funny ones and I'd get tired of the two girls however, it turns out it was the other way round.
Like I mentioned in my opening, there really is no plot here. The characters have no depth to them apart from the fact that they are destructive at parties or just destructive at life. I wasn't asking for some Inception level story but it is literally (and I'm not kidding); find dates, go to Hawaii, mayhem ensues for just over an hour. It's like they took the setting from 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' and just changed the script to something basic and unoriginal. Every plot point (there aren't many) and the ending especially is so obvious and signposted, it can be seen from a mile off. Even the driver that smashed into the M20 bridge could have seen this coming. A positive that Mike and Dave have is that it doesn't suffer from what I like to call 'Second Half-itis'. What I mean by this is that many comedies like to throw all of their jokes at you in the first half of the film that they run out by the second half and focus on the story. Maybe it's because Mike and Dave hardly had a story to begin with but the second half was equally as funny as the first. Here's where the problem arises as Mike and Dave commit a cardinal sin with comedies. It's not funny. Correction; it's not as funny as it thinks it is nor as it should be. The idea that these guys just wreck shop at every party they go to and are asked to behave could have made for a side-splitting fun time. There's even the fact that this kind of happened. Mike and Dave Stangle are real people. I think it was a case of an idea that looked great on paper but didn't come together when being made. It has moments of absolute hysteria but they were only moments. It was never continuous. I'd laugh at something and then it would be at least like a five or ten minute wait until I laughed again. There's even a couple laughs that I felt guilty about because it was either so bad or really awkward. The really awkward laughs came from a masseuse scene involving rubbing butts together.
If you were after a quick watch with friends in which you'll share a few laughs, Mike and Dave fits that description. However for me, I was hoping that it could be the comedy of the summer but it was just really weak in terms of jokes. It's not wedding dates Mike and Dave need. It's laughs.
My Verdict: 4.5/10
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