Review of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) by Riley A — 23 Jul 2016

It was pretty funny. Not much to say about the film it wasn't a stand out comedy. It's a predictable fratboy like rom-com. All the normal beats are there, they get to together, something happens that breaks the boys apart from the girls and they get back together. It felt more like a mix between Wedding Crashers and Step-Brothers. Zac Efron and Adam Devine play two crazy brothers who ruin family functions, they are the hardcore party types. Their parents force them to find responsible dates for their sisters wedding vacation. So the two bros search and find two raunchy girls played by Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick. The two girls pose as responsible girls in order to attend the wedding trip in Hawaii. Without watching the movie, one can possibly spoil it through other films that have shared the same formula. The girls get outed, a lot of shaninigans take place during the wedding trip. Even though the film has a lot of commonalities there are some laughs in the film. Zac Efron is furthering his status as a great comedic actor as the dumb younger brother. Adam Devine is funny, however what got tiresome is the line-o-rama moments. These moments have become very common in movies, where the cha actors are just riffing on a joke. Before line-o-rama was a huge comedic device. Most of the times the director would edit the nonsense out to keep the one joke that works. However now in comedy films, you have the characters spouting out a bevy of lines to keep the laughs coming. The problem with this setup is that the joke gets stale to the point where it gets borderline annoying.

On the girls end, Plaza and Jendrick played some great scumbags. I liked the fact that Plaza went against her normal deadpan type. Her character is the wildest out of the two.

The first two portions of the film is good, once again it's nothing new but it satisfies anyone coming in for a laugh. However the third act where the characters have to get back together and also repair the damage they caused was pretty routine and not interesting. I wanted to cringe a bit when the four went into a synchronized dance at the wedding.

Overall, it's an okay film for a few laughs during this summer season. It does nothing new to break the mold of Frat-boy romcoms.