Film Review: ‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates’ is Hilarious Joy

Submitted by PatrickMcD on July 8, 2016 - 10:27am

CHICAGO – In these difficult times, we flat out need a belly laugh. The timing of “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” couldn’t be better, because this group of comic actors and this movie provides a respite of hilarious joy. By simply exploiting the truth of the based-on-a-real-story premise, “Mike and Dave” is the type of farce that anybody can relate to, and laugh at gratefully.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

The genius is in the likeliness of the scenario. Like “Bridesmaids” before it, everyone can relate to the fake wedding piety, that is an absolute recipe for disaster in the right (or wrong) circumstance. The boys in the story who need dates are familiar, the gruff-but-benign Dad is everybody’s Dad at some point in life and the two party girls looking for a free vacation are all of us. Everything becomes a recognizable tipping point that is taken to a comic extreme. It comes down to making things more wrong by trying to make them right.

Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) are free-partying, late twentysomething New York City boys whose business is liquor sales. They have a penchant for destroying family gatherings with their free spirit disregard for propriety. When their sister Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard) announces her engagement, the boys are told in no uncertain terms by their father Burt (Stephen Root) that they must have decent wedding dates.

Both are between relationships, so they do what anyone would do when trying to get two dates to take on a destination wedding in Hawaii…they put an ad in Craigslist. It goes viral, they get on TV, and two hard-partying lovelies named Alice (Anna Kendrick) and Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) see an opportunity. They dress themselves up, put on fake nice-girl personas and become the wedding dates. What could possibly go wrong? 

“Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” opens everywhere on July 8th. Featuring Adam Devine, Zac Efron, Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, Stephen Root, Alice Wetterlund, Kumail Nanjiani, Jake Johnson, Sam Richardson and Sugar Lyn Beard. Written by Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien. Directed by Jake Szymanski. Rated “R”