Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates Review

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Usually when “based on a true story” appears in the title credits, you at least feel that the narrative will be strong, for why would anybody create a movie based on a real life incident that isn’t at all interesting? Well to find the answer to that question you’d have to ask writers Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien, who have penned the screenplay for the frustratingly unfunny, uninteresting Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Even the title is poor.

Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) are brothers, and more importantly, they’re idiots. Though believing themselves to be the life and soul of the party, in reality they’re generally the main reason behind most family events regressing into sheer disaster. As the wedding between their sister Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard) and her fiancé Eric (Sam Richardson) approaches, the brother’s beleaguered parents insist they both turn up with respectable dates, and so they advertise for women to fill such roles on Craigslist, expecting a handful of applicants.

But with the lure of a free trip to Hawaii included, they get thousands of replies and the story goes viral – and it attracts the attention of Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) and Alice (Anna Kendrick), who feel they’re perfect for the position, both in need of a holiday to overcome the latter recently being jilted on her own wedding day. The one thing is, however, they’re gonna have to pretend to be respectable.

“I hate me” is a line uttered by all four of the leading protagonists in this movie, and while their reprehensible nature is a narrative device and adds to the self-deprecating charm of this endeavour, they are so unlikeable that it creates a distance between the film and viewer, and makes for a feature that is a challenge to invest in, as they have no redeeming features at all.

The film also vies to be profound in the latter stages, but director Jake Szymanski simply hasn’t earned the right to be earnestly romantic when the whole feature thrives in the notion of irreverence. Meanwhile there are a handful of jokes that misfire, while Devine’s unfortunate imitation of Jack Black’s comic sensibilities is off-putting, irritating enough as it is, and the actor is not even able to boast being the one who did it first.

As Mike and Dave’s parents say to them in the opening scene, “this schtick was cute for a while but it’s gotten stale”, which, though aimed at their persistent ability to ruin everything, also manages to be somewhat, and unfortunately, representative of this particular brand of comedy.