Review of The Wedding Ringer (2015) by Dc E — 26 Feb 2015

We've pretty much seen this movie before, I Love You, Man gave us Paul Rudd in a role where he had no guy friends and needed a Best Man at his wedding, so embarks on a desperate search for that guy to stand up there with him at the altar. The Wedding Ringer is very similar, our main character, Doug, is a loser who manages to secure an insanely hot girlfriend, who being a bit of a social butterfly has a bridal party of eight girls. Now Doug doesn't even have one friend, let alone eight to match his soon to be wife's bridesmaids. What is he gonna do?! Enter Jimmy (Kevin Hart), The Wedding Ringer. He can provide you with a Best Man and wedding party, for a price.

This actually makes for quite a fun concept. And it is good to see Kevin Hart back in a role where he can really stretch his wings. I found in his last movie that I saw, Ride Along, he seemed to be on a leash. In the character of Jimmy he gets to play that 'Kevin Hart' role, a cocky, fast talking son of a bitch. And Josh Gad as the desperate Doug is really charming. I'm surprised he doesn't get more lead roles like this, and expect he will acquire more in the future. I just can't stop thinking of Olaf from Frozen when I hear his voice.

Now as you can probably tell from the brief plot summary I gave earlier, it's a pretty straight forward movie, and somewhat predictable. But that's ok, that's what this kind of movie should be like. Sitting down to watch The Wedding Ringer, I was relieved to find I didn't need to use my brain, especially after watching all these Oscar nominated films of late. It's an easy watch and I appreciate that.

Saying this, there was a lot of lazy writing in this movie. Depending a lot on cliches and I would have liked a little more development on the bride's side of things. We barely knew her, and even less of her bridal party which I think could have added more to this story. And there are the makings of a romance between Jimmy and the Maid of Honour (Olivia Thirlby), who becomes suspicious of the friendship between him and Doug. But the clues leading up to this suspicion didn't add up for me to believe that she was on to them. A little more exploration into her character would have fixed that.

Overall The Wedding Ringer is a solid and enjoyable comedy, a simple breath of fresh air among all the harder content that is in cineplexes today. I recommend seeing it at the movies if you're looking to switch your mind off. Otherwise this will make for a great weekend rental when it's released on DVD.

3/5.