L Movie Review 2You’re cordially invited to the wedding of Jim And Margot, Friday June 30th, on Amazon Prime. Dinner, dancing, disaster, wonderful scenery and lackluster comedy to follow. 

It’s the marriage of two very different actors, Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, in a subgenre where different personalities can mesh to cathartic results. In the best wedding movies, things must go terribly wrong before they can go tremendously right. In such classics as Monsoon Wedding and The Princess Bride, couples must endure whirligig madness before they can enjoy everlasting bliss, overcoming obstacles such as unsupporting parents, unwanted guests and unrealistic road blocks, but this film might take the wedding cake when it comes to movie catastrophes.

Everyone wants their sister to have the perfect wedding, but Margot (Witherspoon) takes it to a whole nother level. When her sister gets engaged, she plans her wedding the way old couples plan their vacations, bullet pointing every single moment on the itinerary (10 a.m. breakfast, 11 a.m. rehearsal) before she realizes something is off — the event is double booked with another wedding, which means she’s going to have to fight for docks at sunset, bridal showers and closing ceremonies with the opposing wedding.

The setup feels like it was written in the early 2000’s for Julia Roberts and the throwback is amusing, with the battle between Margot and Jim (Will Ferrell), the father of the bride of the other wedding, making for some humorous moments. Ferrell is cinema’s preeminent manchild, and while you can tell the filmmakers asked him to be more restrained than usual, you can see his childish side mischievously slip through the cracks when he gets into bouts with Margot. Like a child in detention, Ferrell can’t help but goof around even when he’s told to be quiet. His Jim does come from a place of torment — his wife just passed away — but his immature outbursts make for the best gags in the movie.

The rest of the movie’s characters are shallow caricatures. Jim’s daughter has a bland personality that doesn’t add to the comedy; Margot’s sister has a bland personality that doesn’t add to the comedy. The two brides agree to share the hotel until things get overly complicated and they start to sabotage each other’s plans like rivals at summer camp, pranking each other with alligators in rooms, drugs in cakes and zebra costumes in ceremonies, but the jokes on us. Director Nicholas Stoller has proven he can blend contrasting tones in comedies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but his attempts at pulling the heartstrings amidst chaos fail to sizzle, not to mention the gags on cultural differences (Margot’s life in the city verse Jim’s life in the country) paired with the aggressive vulgarities about incest.

If you like unabashedly silly wedding movies, there’s some decent jokes from Ferrell, and the relationship between him and his daughter does have its moments. But there’s nothing fresh about You’re Cordially Invited, and it lacks the laugh-out-loud moments you’d want from a goofy rom-com. For better and for worse, this is another wedding movie with generically vulgar humor.