Mike (Devine) and Dave (Efron) need wedding dates because every time there is a family get together the hard-partying brothers take things too far and the event ends in disaster. So when sister Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard) makes them promise to find 'nice girls' as dates for her Hawaiian wedding, the boys put the word out on social media and are approached by the meek Alice (Kendrick) and the reserved Tatianna (Plaza). The only thing is the ladies are stoner slobs and party harder than the boys and, looking forward to an all-expenses-paid holiday, they plan to kick off once they hit the islands…
Based on a true story, the flimsy set up is made flimsier when it relies on the four leads to ad-lib. How much of the script is the Bad Neighbours writers Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien) and how much is down to cast improvisation is unclear but one thing is certain: the cast don't know when to call time on a joke. Every potentially funny scene is dragged out as each one tries to out-do the other, piling one-liner on top of one-liner in the hope that one will hit. They mostly don't and a lot of scenes descend into a shouting match with much gesticulation while others rely on wacky physical comedy that, like the Jurassic Park ATV tour, feel like lukewarm rehashes from an Adam Sandler holiday movie.
Most of what’s wrong with this raucous comedy is down to Adam Devine. With his scrunched up face, arched eyebrows and over-the-top reactions, he's operating on a different plane to everyone else. Shouting almost every other line, he only dials it down during the forced 'I have to stop being such a goof/need to sort my life out' introspective scene that every comedy feels it needs to have. He's as irritating as Anna Kendrick is wasted.
Is it all bad? No. The busy opening ten minutes whizz by and have more gags and pratfalls than the rest of the film combined. And Plaza is a lot of fun, although she curiously becomes increasingly sidelined as the big day approaches.
There was potential for a Wedding Crashers-esque hoot here (a movie that's referred to a lot for some reason here) but there’s only so much aggressive shouting one can take before being numbed to it all.