Director Jake Szymanski’s fictitious siblings Mike and Dave need more than wedding dates in this baseless and brainless raunchy comedy. For starters, it needs to wipe off its monotonous mediocrity as a lame laugher laced with empty-headed vulgarity and cheap chuckles straining for manufactured amusement. The genre regarding raunchy comedies had always had that miss-or-hit gamble about its cockeyed presentation. For the tedious and tepid Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates it is safe to say that it will not be on the Mount Rushmore of classic naughty farces in the tradition of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky’s or the American Pie film franchise anytime soon.
Banally sluggish and lazily crass, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates tries desperately to register its juvenile high-wire impishness as inspired lunacy but the profane randomness of Szymanski’s (along with screenwriters Andrew Jay Coleman and Brendan O’Brien) jiggle-and-giggle romp is about as riotous and inspired as a drippy diaper. Thankfully Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates does not entirely sink to the forgettable levels yet of say the earlier released fetid raunchfest Dirty Grandpa (although both films features principal players Zac Efron and Aubrey Plaza in the cast) but that still is not saying much for its feeble defense.
The problem with most modern youth-oriented sex farces is that ready-made mentality of delivering shock value debauchery that have no sense of coherence or irreverent purpose to support the so-called funny, bouncy rhythms of the movie is sloppily realized. Instead, filmmakers focus on promoting outrageous and recycled ribaldry without arming the unconventional story with something more serviceable and solid. Essentially Szymanski tosses the stilted zaniness against the wall hoping that anything sticks as proposed hilarity.
The Stangle Brothers in Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) is a couple of mischievous misfits that attract mayhem whenever possible. They revel in the sordid good times and are proven to be a handful for their exasperated parents Burt and Rosie (Stephen Root and Stephanie Faracy). The only ray of hope concerning Burt’s and Rosie’s success regarding offspring comes in the package of daughter Jeannie (Sugar Lyn Beard). Jeannie is preparing for her upcoming wedding and appears to have something concrete going on in her life more so than her “party-hearty” bone-headed brothers.
Anyhow, Mike and Dave are subjected to the ultimatum set by their frustrated parents to “straighten up” and grab some semblance of maturity. The source for getting this dim-witted duo to shape up involves their baby sister’s Hawaiian-based wedding. If Mike and Dave were to attend Jeannie’s exotic ceremony they must grab respectable dates otherwise reject the notion of becoming part of their sister’s life-changing, special occasion. One of the puzzling aspects of this toothless plot is to ponder why these sibling screw-ups would seriously care to change their wayward ways by a parental threat of not showing up at their precious sister’s island-based nuptials? Oh please…
In any event, Mike and Dave get busy trying to fish for formidable escorts but this proves futile until an Internet ad seeking “nice girls” for a Hawaiian getaway draws considerable attention as loads of women take notice. As the many female applicants react to Mike’s and Dave’s sensational date to the scenic 50th state for some gorgeous sun and fun there are two tarts in particular that pop out of nowhere in Alice and Tatiana (Anna Kendrick from “Pitch Perfect” and Aubrey Plaza from the aforementioned “Dirty Grandpa”).
Although they are stimulating as eye-candy for the brothers to drag to Hawaii both Alice and Tatiana fail the required prerequisite as being goodie two-shoes companions for Mike and Dave. In fact, Alice and Tatiana are quite the opposite but must hide their true nature as bombastic bimbos with acid tongues if they are to take advantage of the golden opportunity to travel to picturesque Hawaii. Predictably, the devious dates fall into their genuine selves as rambunctious chicks…something that Mike and Dave must deal with concerning this clumsy deception by the riff raffish Alice and Tatiana.
No doubt that Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates intended to be some throwaway chuckle-minded showcase searching for its titillating temperature of off-kilter jocularity. Sadly, this moronic movie is reduced to going through the run-of-the-mill tactics of broad jokes falling flat, lightweight sight gags, silly-minded pratfalls and attractive profanity-spewing undesirables that are somehow supposed to tickle our collective, indiscriminate funnybones. Consequently, everything in this callous concoction of a comedy feels relentlessly artificial, overwrought and forced.
Sure, the off-the-wall characterizations in the main foursome of the Stangle sibs and their tag-along traveling trophies are expected to be a fine hot-mess. Nevertheless, the whole production unintentionally strives to be that same hot-mess but for totally different reasons. Efron, a veteran of a string of painful cockeyed comedies that some of his most ardent female fans might have trouble recalling, channels his familiar wild pretty boy persona from Neighbors…one of the very few flicks worth mentioning on Efron’s flaccid filmography. Devine’s Mike comes off as achingly overbearing as the brother with the showy awkwardness to match the synthetic obnoxiousness. Kendrick’s Alice does not seem remotely convincing as the phony “decent date for hire”. At least Plaza’s Tatiana shows some modicum of plausibility as the bad girl grounded in rawness.
It is unfortunate that Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates could not have added anything fresh or subversive to the trivial table with the noxious material and other regurgitated clichés that bombard these notoriously flimsy R-rated spectacles with a pseudo-provocative pulse. It is safe to say that watching the eye-rolling shenanigans of Mike and Dave Spangle on the big screen is enough to call this whole exhausting affair beyond a dating disaster.
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016)
20th Century Fox
1 hr. 38 mins.
Starring: Zac Efron, Adam Devine, Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza,Stephen Root, Stephanie Faracy, Sugar Lyn Beard
Directed by: Jake Szymanski
MPPA Rating: R
Genre: Comedy
Critic’s rating: * ½ stars (out of 4 stars)
Frank Ochieng © 2016
