The Wedding Ringer (2015)

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Easy, you want to have a great time and laugh? Watch any Kevin Hart movie a you'll do... not a masterpiece of comedy but has a great deal of funny moments. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon

Overall: The movie is funny, feel good and I would recommend it.Good:*Very Funny*All the cast have great chemistry*Plot is well written but can be easy to predict*It's a very feel good movieBad: *The music is a bit bland and misplaced at times*The original bride is forgettable and boring *Only a few groomsmen are memorable and have good personalities but are all unique *The plot is easy to predictBest Part: The dance scene between Josh Gad and Kevin Hart is hilarious and incredibly well done.8/10

"The Wedding Ringer" is another modern comedy that tries to have it both ways. It goes for gross-out, outrageous humour, referencing topics like child abuse and zoophilia, but also tries for moments of soppiness. It gets neither, perhaps because the script is just so clichéd and yet poorly assembled that it seems to lurch from one familiar moment to the next. It's like the movie has a split personality, one good, one evil, both exhausted.The movie opens with the suave, charming pretend best man played by Kevin Hart (is he the "Wedding Ringer" of the title? What is a "wedding ringer"?) killing it in his role as a best friend for hire, fooling everyone with a marvelous speech. The guy who hired him thinks they might actually be friends, but no! Hart is a cold S.O.B. who is only in it for the money. But could he possibly have a heart (no pun intended) after all? Anyway, our hero tracks him down to employ his services as a best man for his own wedding - he's an average looking fat guy with no friends who has improbably convinced some blonde babe to marry him: Kaley Cuoco, who has made a career of playing the blonde babe with an improbable connection to quirky geeks and misfits.If you aren't clichéd out by now, it gets worse: Kevin Hart doesn't want take the job! He laughs in the hero's face!Just once I would like to see a movie which begins with someone being offered a job and them accepting it. Why do they ALWAYS have to turn it down at first? Of course, something happens - who cares what, it's so trite you stop paying attention - to make Hart change his mind.Then we get obligatory scenes of Hart and the loser hero - Josh Gad, I think the actor who plays him is called - rehearsing for their pretend friendship. In a wiser comedy, this material could actually be poignant and truthful, but of course it just goes for silly montages showing ridiculous ways of faking photos to convince people they have a history.The movie gets more than a little weird in its reliance on cliché when Hart has to assemble a group of groomsmen who will also pretend to be the loser hero's friends, and exclusively chooses weirdos. Why would someone as gifted at the con as Hart's character is shoot himself in the foot so ridiculously by choosing his partners in crime so poorly? They look like they're not even from the same universe as him. I fear, reader, it is because believable conmen like Hart's character would become a bit creepy if we saw them fool everybody to that extent. Not to be - we need easy laughs, again, to distract from the essential sadness of the movie's premise, that some people don't have friends and have to buy them to avoid embarrassment. We don't get those laughs, but never mind. If the movie didn't lose me here, the "Bachelor Party"/"Hangover Part Twelve" scene that came soon after did. We needed the gross out, and the graphic male nudity, so we get a party which spirals out of control and, wouldn't you know it, all the freaky groomsmen's weirdness comes in handy after all, as if this were a kids' movie circa 1994, trying to teach us to value the individuality of people.Or, you know, perhaps the filmmakers just ran out of grown up movie clichés and started ripping off "The Mighty Ducks". There is also an obligatory sports scene, with quick editing of people getting rammed into, falling over, getting muddy... and then the heroes winning, despite the presence of the 6'10" Ed "Too Tall" Jones, a football hero in real life, and another guy who's 6'6". They could have made this scene at least halfway believable by casting average guys. What was the point of making the opposite team actual NFL retirees? You know how it's going to end between Hart & Gad. What may be harder to believe is that they try for a sweet moment after some of the other garbage the movie contains. It veers between gross out and glucose to quickly it could give you whiplash. Hart does have a few funny moments though. As with "Get Hard", he is the only thing about this movie that works.

I really wanted to like this movie, mainly because I think Kevin Hart has had a rough few years. Not financially of course; the guy has been starring in more than a few comedies the past couple years, but critically, none of them (Ride Along, Get Hard, About Last Night) can be called a genuinely great movie. The Wedding Ringer is the best of the bunch, though. This is Kevin Hart in his element - his most dynamic performance and playing a Hitch-style role where he gets hired to be people's best mans for guys who don't have any friends. Josh Gad plays the loser character, and he and Hart have great chemistry and some very funny back and forth moments. I was actually surprised at how much I was enjoying this movie for the first half, but then the problems became too glaring to ignore.The premise feels fresh and fun in the beginning. It felt like a cross between Wedding Crashers and I Love You, Man without directly copying either of them. The problem is, those movies had more character depth beyond their two leads. Here, every character besides Hart and Gad are cardboard cutouts. The biggest offender is Paige, played by Kaley Cuoco. She is the most shallow caricature of a woman I've seen in comedy in a long long time. It's a shame because Kaley does what she can, but her character is so one-dimensional you can't even connect with her on any level. The random groomsman have their moments, but they're still only caricatures. There's the buff guy, the fresh out of prison rapist, the guy who likes pulling out his penis, the socially awkward guy, etc. They may have defining traits, but not one of them feels like a fleshed out character.Structure is another problem in this movie because after an excellent setup, it starts going down the list of the same tropes and beats as every other zany wedding comedy. Competitive family football scene? Check. Guy finding out girl is actually a bitch? Check. Guy and employer who have a strictly business relationship actually become friends in the end? Check. It's a shame because when Kevin Hart is given a chance to shine, he shines. But those moments become less and less often as the movie tries to tie itself neatly with a bow in the third act.The Wedding Ringer is good for a few laughs, but in the end it's just another Kevin Hart comedy that had potential but didn't explore it. The man has proved himself to be a comedic force to be reckoned with. Now it's just a waiting game until he finds a script that fully plays to his strengths. Until then, The Wedding Ringer seems to be the one to beat, and as far as raunchy comedies go, you could do a lot worse.