The Wedding Ringer

The Wedding Ringer 

 Okay, this movie is pretty bad. Combine all of the shitty wedding comedies with by the numbers raunchy movie. It just comes across as dull and not funny for the most part, and that's sad. The movie is patch work of other poorly written movies.

Basically, Kevin Hart is a guy that nerdy guys (groom) hire to pretend to be the best man and long time friend. The wedding ringer falls for this one guy (Josh Gad) and becomes friends with him.

You have the comedic, hip black guy (Kevin Hart), and you get the straight laced business white man that happens to be square too. It is like a text book screenplay mandated by a studio. It is so familiar that the movie doesn't even bother to make it seem like a different story. Lazy, lazy writing.

Kevin Hart is probably the best thing about the movie. He is trying his best in here with a mundane script. However, it does seem he doesn't turn down any script. Yes, you want to get paid, but pick better scripts, Kevin. I saw him in another movie, which wasn't bad. However, watching him in this and in the horrible Soul Plane, he hasn't had a good track record.

There are so many similarities to Hitch that's its not funny. It's like the studio had a list of everything they wanted from Hitch and mixed it with everything they wanted from an American Pie type movie. The movie is highly uneven and doesn't know what it wants to be. Does it want to be a shitty wedding comedy or a raunchy comedy from the early 2000s?

Because it feels like a cobbled together script nothing is really paid off the way you want it to be. And, then there are subplots that come out of nowhere.

While very lovely, Olivia Thirlby's character has little to nothing to do with the overall plot. And, that's a shame because she is such a good actress. Plus, she is really hot. Her romantic interest in just comes out of nowhere midway through the story and it is never fully paid off. Why even introduce this character and good actress to the movie and waste her?

The other left-field subplot comes in the form of the bride (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting). There really aren't hints of that she that she is a bad person, but suddenly the bad aspects pop up in the last 10 minutes of the movie. She flips a switch and becomes a terrible bridezilla. Yet, the weak script can't convince you that she is THAT bad.

-A dog licking a man's balls and dick: One of the main characters has a dog go down on him and proceeds to have the dog have a heart attack. Was any of this supposed to be funny?

-There seems to be half a “Pretty Woman” subplot that suddenly appears with a woman who is either a stripper or a hooker turning on Josh Gad. It appears and then disappears and only comes back quickly in the last few minutes. It just seems strange.

The Wedding Ringer doesn't really have a funny bone in its body. It feels like there were two scripts here. There was a guy raunchy script and an annoying wedding script. Neither one of them are any good. Kevin Hart tries, but he needed a way better script and not a “by the numbers one”. I can't recommend this movie at all.

Grade: D