The Wedding Ringer
There is a perception among a number of people that comedy is a weak art form. That it’s an easy thing to do. The age of YouTube has shown us that pieces of randomness that had literally no thought put into them can be found funny and get viral until we all get sick of them and they collapse under the weight of their own success.
I’d argue however that comedy is one of the hardest things to write and perform well. YouTube has also taught us that for something to stay with us in our mind, there has to be some intelligence behind it, even if it appears to be random.
Check out this video for an example.
Surely if a couple of Scottish cartoonists can come up with something, a budget of $23 Million can do the same thing.
This scene was not funny. Really not funny.
The Wedding Ringer stars Kevin Hart as a man who can be hired to be your best man on your wedding day, if you’re like the protagonist of this film and have no friends.
That sounds like a reasonably good premise, doesn’t it? It fits right into the old rule that a comedy must end with a wedding. Also, with the whole deception thing, there are times when this feels like a heist/con film.
On top of that Kevin Hart is not a bad choice for this role. He’s a charming man who can also bring, fast-talking funny in his stand-ups which appear everywhere on my Facebook wall. This is going to be great!
No. It’s not. Because of all the boxes I appear to have ticked off, I’ve missed out one cataclysmically important one. A comedy must be funny. The most that came out of me was a nasal exhale and a polite smile in the 101 minutes of this movie.
This movie is so boring and predictable. The “drama” bits feel like they come out of nowhere. The characters are generally stereotypes (bar Kevin Hart and one other clever exception). And when it tries to make serious points on its theme of “you need friends”, it feels cheap and rushed.
One other major point the movie tries to get across is that weddings are all a sham to make the Bride and the Bride’s Mother happy on their wedding day. Now, I don’t know what your opinions on the concept of marriage are, but judging by the rest of the movie, the writers of this movie want to get back at women for some reason.
I know I’ve talked a lot about sexism in movies recently and I won’t say that there is as much as some films, here. But the premise and some of the plot-points feel just anti-girl, in my opinion. The mantra of this immature mess most likely being “bros-before-hoes”.
As we struggle to get to the end, we get the standard “friend meeting the in-laws”, “bachelor party” and “people play American Football scene”. None of which were funny.
Once we reach the end, I will give the movie credit that they tried to do something a little different and put across some form of a good message, and they did set up some elements of it a bit. But the final reveal which causes this ending is so ridiculous that I imagine the writers using it as a way to get them out of the corner they’d written themselves into.
And the film keeps going after that ending to more misogynistic partying which makes little sense and doesn’t add anything. The lights came up in the theatre a good few seconds before the movie finished. I think the cinema itself was bored with it.
It is not that easy to write a review for a bad comedy. Not only is it not easy to sit through, but there’s only so many times you can write “that’s not funny”. I think I did OK for my first. Let me know what you think.
Recommended Scenario: If you can really, really switch off your mind. Or you are on holiday with no DVDs, books or friends.
If what I have written tells you that you would like this film, you can book tickets to see it at your local Cineworld here. 
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