this so-called "comedy" film was releasedon january 16, 2015 - where it depressingly tripled its $23-million dollar budget underjeremy garelick's direction. the extremely busy kevin hart stars in the title role asa "best man" for hire, who becomes emotionally involved with his latest client josh gad - anawkward and friendless millionaire looking for something more. explaining his reasoningfor dropping a middle-classer's yearly salary on an underhanded prank, gad proclaims, "iwant my real life to be as fun as the one i made up!". honestly, it plays out like avery typical rom-com narrative, except it's about a couple of mismatched dudes. hart andgad are both veterans at this type of low-bro work by now, and while they're passably enjoyablecharacters - it's the premise itself which
is so grating and annoying. a certain amount of disbeliefis understandable, but the "let's use $50,000 to trick the woman i'm about to marry intothinking i have a gaggle of dysfunctional friends" is downright insulting and ridiculous.it doesn't help either that the one "victim" on the other side of this equation, the cutekaley cuoco-sweeting is irredeemable herself. and while "the hangover" proved it is possibleto have a successful comedy despite being filled with unlikable and conspiring characters,this r-rated farce has no such luck. the 101-minute story has, at best, three jokes that actuallywork, thanks entirely to hart's quick and witty delivery, and never the unbelievablescript itself. a quick reference to "lost"
from jorge garcia that caps-off the picturewas also pretty funny. an extended mud-covered game of football with a group of old-timers,including an inspired appearance by joe 'broadway' namath is a decently fun sequence, but ithas zero relevancy to the rest of the story, and seems to exist only because garelick wantedsome physical comedy in his picture. the only dynamic that isn't painful to watch is a under-developedromantic sub-plot between hart and one of the bridesmaids, played by the curious oliviathirlby who quickly begins to suspect this new gentleman in her future brother-in-law'swife isn't who he seems. the summation of their trickier and deception is a powerpointslideshow during the rehearsal dinner (is such a presentation even a thing?), wherehart and his employees showcase a string of
poorly photoshopped images that make gad'spitiful life seem more exciting. not only would this charade fool no one... what's theend game here? going through life that wasn't built on a single lie, but an entire nestof preposterous bullshit? the drawn-out conclusion, that sees all of these lies clumsily beingrevealed is handled well enough, but by then any interest i had in seeing these charactersbe nice to each other was gone. with nothing impressive about the technical or visual aspectsof this movie, the only folks who might get something out of it are staunch fans of hart- but let's be honest, he's in like seven movies a year now, so you're probably betteroff watching anything else. "the wedding ringer" is a mean-spirited chore with unpleasant characters- i thought it was a bad film.
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