‘Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates’ Abandons Comedy at the Altar

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is the kind of movie where you can summarize a character’s entire personality on a name tag: “Hi, my name is Dave, and I like to draw!” So, it doesn’t take a cinematic Nostradamus to predict every humorless twist in this anemic comedy from director Jake Szymanski. Uninspired sketches about morally bankrupt characters will leave you yearning for the emotional subtleties of an Adam Sandler debacle. It even makes Aubrey Plaza look bad, and that we won’t forgive.

Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) are hard-partying brothers who sell alcohol for their family’s distributorship. It’s a bad omen that even their last name – Stangle – makes you think of strangling them. The Brothers Stangle have a bad habit of getting hammered and ruining family weddings. A tired video montage highlights their exploits, including fireworks demolition and inducing heart attacks in elderly relatives.

Frankly, it’s unbelievable that Mike has avoided prison. His barely contained rage lurks menacingly close to the surface, just waiting to erupt in a barrage of deafening shrieks and wild flailing. Dave is just the hapless puppy that tags along, occasionally spouting some drivel about quitting the family business so he can “draw stuff.” That either brother survived to adulthood is a testament to child-proof medicine caps and tables with rounded edges.

Mom (Stephanie Faracy) and Dad (Stephen Root) have no intention of allowing the boys to ruin their little sister Jeanie’s (Sugar Lyn Beard) wedding, so Dad issues an ultimatum: “Bring respectable dates to the wedding or stay away!” Perhaps, “Stay away from the tequila!” might have been a more effective anti-shenanigan deterrent, but what fun would that be? Out of love for their squeaky-voiced sister, who apparently replaced her lungs with helium balloons, the boys reluctantly honor Dad’s outrageous affront to promiscuity. But how do a couple of eligible bachelors find two “good girls” to take an all-expenses paid wedding excursion to Hawaii? Why, Craigslist, of course!

Mike and Dave are stunned by the overwhelming response to their advertisement, even if most of the replies were probably written in crayon. Two of the more promising candidates are a couple of druggy burnouts named Alice (Anna Kendrick) and Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza). In this case, “promising” means they can form complete sentences. However, Alice and Tatiana are far from the good girls that Dad envisioned. Tatiana concocts a conservative teacher persona to dupe the easily duped Mike, while Alice falls hard for Dave’s dreamy eyes and monosyllabic banter. It’s truly a match made in rom-com Hell.

Almost everything about Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is irritating. From the hyperactive performances to the overwrought dialogue delivered at ear-splitting decibels, Szymanski creates a glorified cinematic aneurysm. The screenwriters themselves acknowledge this fact, as the film’s best zingers are merciless barbs aimed directly at these unlikeable characters.

Tatiana makes the astute observation that Mike, “Looks like the funhouse mirror reflection of a good-looking guy.” Later, a secondary character succinctly deconstructs our four heroes as, “self-absorbed, co-dependent weirdos.” It makes for a decidedly mean-spirited affair that delights in laughing at the characters rather than with them. It also begs the question: “If the filmmakers don’t like their own characters, why should we?”

Perhaps the most inexplicable thing about Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien’s script is that Mike and Dave aren’t even the lead characters in their own story. In fact, this film should be entitled, Alice and Tatiana Go to Hawaii and Torture Jeanie. Efron, in particular, disappears for long stretches of time and has literally nothing to do when he finally returns. The filmmakers might have simply placed Efron’s chiseled abs on a mannequin and saved themselves some money.

Mike and Dave feels like one of the dozens of Farrelly Brothers knockoffs we endured after the runaway success of There’s Something About Mary (1998). Each gag is designed for maximum shock value with no regard for its logic or importance within the story.

You can feel the screenwriters going down their laundry list of broad comedy tropes. They needed some awkward lesbian tension, so they introduce Cousin Terry (Alice Wetterlund) to be their “Bi-sexual Fonzie.” Someone needs to take drugs and publically humiliate themselves, so Alice conveniently carries Ecstasy around in her bra. The end result is a series of disjointed sketches cobbled together with unconvincing character “realizations.” There’s simply no way to relate to any of these over-the-top characters and their mind-numbingly predictable wackiness.

Sadly, the acting performances do little to redeem the terrible material. Kendrick comes the closest, as she imbues Alice with an almost believable naiveté that might work in a more realistic scenario. Efron does his best as a Channing Tatum understudy, but his meager comic chops can’t overcome Dave’s underdeveloped role. It’s hard to conceive of a more off-putting screen persona than Devine’s interpretation of Mike. His endless mugging for the camera and serrated screams are a constant distraction from the already forgettable storyline.

More puzzling is the miscalculated performance of the normally reliable Plaza, who is so disappointing, in fact, that you’re left wondering if her shtick is a self-aware lampoon of the entire genre.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates doesn’t have enough laughs or memorable characters to fill a 30-minute sitcom, let alone a 90-minute feature film. Simply put, this is a collection of stupid people doing stupid things that even the stupidest person wouldn’t do.

Were it a bit more absurd, it might function as a surrealistic commentary on the romantic comedy genre. As it stands, however, it’s just a boring comedy about, “self-absorbed, co-dependent weirdos”. Who are we to argue with the screenwriters?