Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

Dir: Jake Szymanski

2016

**

Jake Szymanski's Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates tells the nearly true story of two brothers who placed an ad on Craiglist in 2013 who asked for two girls to accompany them to their cousin's wedding, all expenses paid. The ad soon went viral and the two brother found themselves on Breakfast television and inundated with offers. They wrote a book about it and this film soon followed suit, however, the story is now heavily fictionalized by this point with most of the factual content thrown out the window. I haven't read the book and I have absolutely no intention of doing so. There is no sweet story to be had here, two opportunistic boys went on a website I still don't understand and then wrote a book about the nothingness that they learned from the experience. Their cousin wanted them to bring specific wedding dates so that they wouldn't pester her female friends, the two are clearly pests with something of an ego problem. They made a lot of money at their cousin's expense too, no shame, all profit. By watching the film I bought into their seedy little word and it made me feel dirty. Beyond all that, the film itself isn't great either but it does have a few positives. Zac Efron is fast becoming a funny performer who is more than just a pretty face and he delivers another good performance. I warmed to Adam DeVine after a while but no immediately, he needs to work on his improv but there was something of a young Dan Aykroyd about him that I liked. I've been a champion of Anna Kendrick's for a while, I think the film is beneath her to be honest, she's cut her teeth in dodgy comedies now, time to stick with the well written films I think. Aubrey Plaza's talents are also somewhat wasted here but she and Kendrick do make a great duo. The film's outtakes are very revealing. The girls are made out to be very laddish in the film, taking on roles traditionally associated with young men. They are essentially supposed to be female equivalents to the two brothers but it is way too forced. In the outtakes Plaza is pushed by the director to make more 'Dick jokes' because Fox likes it. When Plaza says she brushes her teeth with dicks in the morning she is told it is too much. She looks unamused and sarcastically asks 'Oh, Fox don't like that?'. It's frustrating to see and it is amazing how wrong Hollywood keeps on getting the emancipation of young women. Break down boundaries by all means but it doesn't take a genius to work out the real equivalents in the younger generations. It is unacceptable and not particularly entertaining to watch men talk about genitalia (theirs or others), why wouldn't it be the same for women? I'm no prude, I just think it's boring and the desired shock just isn't there anymore. However, there are parts of the film that try to shock and titillate that do work and are funny (the massage scene) but it's never out of sophistication. It's a really old premise, updated ever so slightly with the inclusion of modern technology and what you can now get away with in terms of censorship and acceptability. What makes it fresh is the performances and the ability to ad-lib, and while it's not perfect, it's way better than that of the usual suspects from the Apatow generation.