Twentieth Century Fox
What do you get when you combine a first time feature director with the writers of the Neighbors movies, and add a dash of Zac Efron? You get the surprisingly hilarious comedy Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates, that’s what! The plot is very high concept, so much so that it was probably greenlighted on a single sentence pitch to the studio: Two brothers, the life of every party, are told they must bring dates to their sister’s wedding so things don’t get out of control.
Of course, it’s not all simple as that. Because Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Efron) aren’t really the life of the party as we see during the opening credits. They are the destroyer of parties as we see in actual video footage their parents show them that is a complete 180 from what we have already seen. The boys usually end up hitting on all the single women, getting blind drunk, and blowing something up so it’s no wonder they are being ordered to bring dates to the wedding to keep them from riling each other up. That’s easier said than done as the guys don’t have steady girlfriends (or apparently any friends at all), so they decide Craigslist is the way to go. It’s not, but it gives them exposure leading to a TV appearance seen by Alice (Anna Kendrick) and Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza), two hot messes who need a break from their lives and decide to play up the nice girl image the boys are looking for to get a free trip to Hawaii. You can take the girl out of the mess, but you can’t take the mess out of the girl.
Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates is surprisingly much funnier than it could have been. The writing is solid if only to serve to put the characters in one bizarre situation after another for some broad laughs, but it really lives or dies on the cast, and the movie has been stacked with a stellar group of actors who can deliver a line with the right amount of comic timing, or give just the perfect reaction to an event to elicit laughter from the audience.
Efron and Devine play perfectly off of each other. Efron got to play the total jerk in the Neighbors movies, but here he is almost the straight man to Devine’s shenanigans. Efron has to react to everything Devine says and does without stealing any of his thunder. Devine gets to do the bulk of the comedic heavy lifting, whether through dialog or reacting to situations (like accidentally seeing his sister getting a very special massage), providing the broadest laughs of the movie. They make a great pair. Kendrick also delivers some good moments, but she also has to bring a little heart to the story as well as she begins to really fall for Dave. The real shining star of the movie is Plaza, the ringleader of the whole mission. As Tatiana, she has to constantly coddle Alice (who still isn’t over being dumped at the alter, so attending a wedding may not be their best move), she has to charm the boys and toy with Mike’s affections, trying to keep her house of cards standing so they don’t get found out. You really can’t take your eyes off of Plaza as she deftly switches between Tatiana the bad girl to Tatiana the elementary school teacher with some marvelous body language. She earns a gold star for this performance.
Director Jake Szymanski, with his first feature after a TV directing career including Saturday Night Live, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Funny or Die Presents…, does a great job of juggling multiple scenarios, cutting back and forth between scenes and never losing focus, and draws great performances from his cast (and Sugar Lyn Beard also gets kudos for her role as sister Jeanie, spending half the movie with her face banged up from an ATV accident). The script treads close to the raunch but never tips too far over into that territory, and although if you’ve ever seen a movie like this, you know by the third act everyone is going to have to get their acts together, it still never feels trite. It’s the same basic template used for the Neighbors movies, but it still manages to feel fresh and above all very funny.
Mike and Dave may not, at first, be the guys you’d want to spend time with but a good cast, sharp writing and assured direction make the 98 minutes of Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates a raucous good time, and you may even want hang with this group again.
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