Wedding Date Flop ?
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates stars Zac Efron and Adam Devine, who play two brothers who need dates to their little sister’s wedding in Hawaii. The parents of the bride insist that Mike and Dave find dates to bring to the wedding to help them stay tame and to not ruin their sister’s wedding with their usual unexpected, and sometime disastrous, tactics. After placing an ad on Craigslist about needing two nice girls to go with them as dates to their sister's wedding, they eventually found two girls who wanted to go. Though the trip starts off as a success, after about a day, the truth about certain raunchy situations, starts to come out and everything starts falling apart. The bride starts having second thoughts, and Mike and Dave start to feel like a disappointment to everyone, especially to their sister, who mean more to them than anything.
Mike and Dave are two very engaging characters. These engaging characteristics show through in many ways like the aggression they have, towards anything their parents say to them. Even the drastic change from that aggressiveness to a completely calm state, as soon as their sister starts talking. Mike and Dave do outrageous things that typical misbehaved brothers do when they get together, like heavy drinking, dancing on tables etc. Their sister means, as I've mentioned before, so much to them, so when the brothers misbehave on behalf of their sister, it proposes some questions. You may ask the question, “well, why would they ruin their sister’s wedding anyway, if she means so much to them ?” This is exactly what's so interesting because it's almost as if Mike and Dave do these absurd things unconsciously to how horrible it is and how it might affect their sister.
For those of us looking for a good laugh, a distraction from the stress of the school year, or a fun date night movie with bae, Mike and Dave is what Rolling Stone would call a movie that “has the jumpy exuberance of a puppy that won't stop humping your leg” (Travers, Peter. Rolling Stone; “Mike and Dave need Wedding Dates” ). The movie displays certain raunchy humor can either make the scene really awkward or give a good laugh to the whole crowd. One thing is for sure, this isn’t a movie for a night out with the kids before hitting Chuck E Cheese for pizza and games. This a movie I would definitely recommend to a group of friends going out for a night of laughs and raunchy jokes.
This movie display some aspects of weddings and stereotypical White American culture that may not be so familiar to everyone. For example, when most people think of a white american wedding they think of, expensive traveling and proper well-behaved people as guest. Mike and Dave do not display these qualities as most would believe they should., which makes them as them as the movie suggest, “outrageous”. To some this behavior may be what their family wedding receptions bring to the table.
One of the ladies that Mike and Dave end up taking with them to Hawaii for their sister’s wedding is Alice, a girl who was also going to be getting married but was sadly left at the altar by her jerk fiance. Her friend Tatiana,the boys’ second date, was a single waitress who takes pride in having sex with any guy she wants to. She wanted to take Alice there to get away from the haunting thoughts that came from being abandoned at the altar. Alices response to heartbreak was as rough as any girls would be, she just handled it in a different way. Alice was doing so bad recovering from the wedding incident that she would even rewatch the video of her fiance walking away from the altar with what seemed, ease, in an attempt to make herself hate him even more so that she would eventually never want to see him again. This type of therapy, obviously wasn’t working because she was constantly watching the video, even weeks after. This was until she went to Hawaii and clicked with one of the brothers. That being one positive thing that came from this trip which made the movie somewhat meaningful. Meaningfulness in a film is very important, because it makes the audience feel as if, there was some purpose to them paying money to go see it.
The directors of this film do a spectacular job of showing the true meaning of learning from hard situations, in the making of this film. While Mike and Dave are grown adults and probably should've learned this lesson years ago, at the end of the day they used this situation to not point the finger or deny being at fault but instead understand their fault and fix the situation as best as possible. At the end of the movie when Mike, Dave, Alice, and Tatiana realize how huge of an impact their outrageous behavior has on others they all joined together to make sure that they fix the issue as best as possible.
This movie is definitely in the blockbuster comedy categories. To some it was “aggressively stupid” as stated by New York Times (Dargus, Manohla. New York Times Review: ‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,’ Antics to Not Love nor Cherish) but to others, it wasn’t quite that horrible, because of their love for the four young actors. Though Adam Devine has always been known for playing roles in blockbuster comedies, Zac on the other hand is known for playing more serious roles and every now and then adding a comedy to his long list of jobs. Movies like these with such raunchy are good for actors like Zac who’ve played in Disney films, like High School Musical, because it gives them a sense of “Grown Up” look. Which makes certain raunchy plot points are predictable, because you know that they are going to try and keep Zac as a “bad ass” and not the Disney guy.
There were a few scenes that made the movie sort of predictable. For example, there was a scene towards the end of the movie where the boys were back stage and their mics were on and everyone could hear them talking about some private things that happened while they were in Hawaii. I don’t know about everyone else but I completely saw that coming when the the scene started.
There are just a few components of this movie missing. It's almost as if it just doesn't feel complete. Like there's an empty space. I think that seeing the parents, would fill that gap. It's almost like we see them pretty much twice, and then “POOF” they're gone and then appear later out of nowhere. Seeing them would connect us to more characters. Giving the audience more characters to connect to helps them stay engaged. Seeing the parents of the bride and brothers more often would allow us to see even clearer the way that Mike and Dave’s behavior affects the people around them.
The movie entails a lot of comedy on drugs, which kind of eventually gets old. In today’s society the usage of drugs like alcohol and marijuana is so common, that almost all mainstream media outlets use it as apart of their storyline. Sometimes in movies when something is referenced for laughter so much it starts to sort of feel like it's being used as a clutch. The drug reference kind of gets renewed, per say, when the bride and Alice take a little trip to the middle of the woods and find themselves a little over done. The movie didn't in general have many flaws, but the constant reference to marijuana for a laugh definitely was one.
The chemistry between the two actors was insanely great. In all honesty, it kind of seemed as if the chemistry between all of the actors is what saved the movie from being even too repetitive to watch all the way through. As I mentioned previously, the constant reference to marijuana, at times can add a sluggish feeling to the film, after repeated so many times. This goes to show how important it can be for your cast to have a awesome chemistry as they did. Chemistry between your cast can make or break your movie. If you have certain faults in your film the chemistry can make up for that. Zac Efron and Adam Devine, have an unapologetic chemistry, that gives the film a sense of flow when needed. Overall, this film had decent enough flow to get a C+.
Watch the trailer for this raunchy comedy here!
Work Cited
Travers, Peter. “Mike and Dave…” Rolling Stone Magazine. 8 July 2016.
Dargis, Mahnola. Review: ‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,’ Antics to Not Love nor Cherish” New York Times. 7 July 2016.
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