The Wedding Ringer

The comedy focuses on Doug Harris (Josh Gad – yes he voices Olaf in Frozen, get over it!), a clever geeky man who doesn’t have many friends and so when it comes to his wedding he has no one to be his best man or his seven groomsmen. In walks in Jimmy Callahan (Kevin Hart) whose job is being paid to be people’s best man when they have no one else to turn to and need help in showing their bride they are not some loner. So with the help of Callahan as his best man and seven random dudes who work with Callahan, Harris tries to pull off the big con from his fiancée (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting).

There are moments when the film is too silly – too silly that it’s not funny and is actually sort of awkward or boring to watch. Eyes may drift away slightly at some point just to see if there is another gummy bear in the sweet bag for you to eat. For example, the scene with the granny – I won’t spoil it, not that’s there much to spoil, but it wasn’t that funny – we’ve seen too many problems at a family sit down meal in comedies (Meet The Parents/Meet The Fockers are good comedy examples). To be honest, just like when Harris is not sure if he should go through with the wedding or not, The Wedding Ringer can’t make its mind up whether it’s a film that is meant to shock the audience or if it’s here to send the message of friendship with some high laughs. The film seems to try to hard in making the audience spit the food out of their mouth with laughter and disgust when actually we’ve seen more disgusting yet funny scenes in better comedies – e.g. in The Wedding Ringer there’s a dog that licks peanut butter off Harris’ genitals when’s blindfolded and yet it’s not funny because American Pie: The Wedding has already gone further where Jim and Stifler look like they are having sex with dogs and everyone walks in on them (for animals lovers who are concerned, they didn’t actually do it). There some slightly laughable laugh out moments – NOT laugh out loud, just a mere ‘ha ha’ here and there. What is sort of annoying is that the idea of the film is great and the cast are good too – Kevin Hart is really good as the character he plays in it – yet with the problem of really understanding what the film is trying to be, it sort of loses its comedy value and plot.

On a side note, there some funny one-liner moments from Kevin Hart but my favourite part is at the end SPOILER ALERT KLAXON when Harris and Callahan and all the pretend groomsmen are on a plane (who are now all true friends with geeky Harris), laughing and messing with some women and are about to go on a guy trip when one of the groomsmen on the plane says ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ – why is this funny? Because the groomsman, Lurch, who says this line is played by none other than Jorge Garcia…and ‘who is that?’ you ask? The guy who played Hurley in the famous TV series Lost…and we all know what happened in Lost, right? Anyway, to sum up the film. A few laughs here and there but The Wedding Ringer gets lost on its way from the altar and never reaches crazy wedding party in time.