Movie Review: The Wedding Ringer


The Wedding Ringer is one of those perplexing comedies where about half of the movie is quite hilarious, but the other half isn't really that funny. It's Kevin Hart who makes the movie here, not Josh Gad, and some of the dialogue ended up being flat, but Hart still makes it work.

Doug Harris (Gad) has a problem: he's marrying the girl of his dreams, Gretchen (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting), but has no groomsmen, whereas she has about six or seven bridesmaids. Even worse than that, he has no best man. Doug hears about a "wedding ringer," aka a best man for hire, and finally meets up with him: Jimmy Callahan (Hart), a man whose Best Man services can be bought, for a price. Doug explains that he'll need groomsmen too, and Jimmy sets out to perform the first "Golden Tux": all "rented" groomsmen plus him as the best man. New identities are forged, and Doug goes about introducing his Best Man, "Bic Mitchum," to his fiancee and her family, with sometimes unintentional side effects.

"Bic Mitchum" came about because Doug was on the spot one day in the bathroom when Gretchen asked him the name of his best man - he saw his Bic razors and his Mitchum deodorant (hello, product placement) in the medicine cabinet and said that was his best friend's name ... who, oh yeah, is a clergyman who is also in the military (which leads to Kevin Hart wearing a white collar plus army fatigues, in a weird but hilarious scene). I like Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting a lot in The Big Bang Theory, but her character here is kind of a jerk - you'll wonder why she and Doug are together, but more is explained near the end of the film about their relationship.

Maybe see this movie. Originally I was going to give it 2.5/5 stars, but when it's funny, it's FUNNY, so I've upped it to 3. One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Kevin Hart's character thinks he's going to teach Gad how to dance, at another wedding, but it turns out Gad is actually quite an accomplished dancer; this reminded me of Wedding Crashers a bit. I definitely don't recommend this movie for kids - as another moviegoer put it, "They're going to hear Olaf say and do some very inappropriate things" (Gad is the voice of Olaf from Frozen), and there's also a lot of swearing/sexual content/etc. I'd recommend The Wedding Ringer for a matinee movie, but overall I was hoping it would have been funnier, especially with Hart and Gad in the main roles.

The Wedding Ringer is in theaters today, January 16th, and is rated R with a runtime of 101 minutes. 3 stars out of 5.

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