'The Wedding Ringer'
Grade: C+
When emotionally and mentally invigorating movies are flooding the screen during Oscar season, there are always one or two to save us from taking ourselves too seriously.
“The Wedding Ringer” was a film that, while doing just that, reeked of stereotypes and clichés.
A dorky, overweight white guy with money gets the beautiful, rich blonde girl to fall for him. The cool black guy comes to save the day, ultimately becoming the best friend of the dorky white guy, teaching him how to have a good time, while they teach one another about real friendship.
Kevin Hart plays Jimmy Callahan, the cool guy that you wish could be your best friend, and for the price of $50,000 he will be. He will be your best man, hire seven groomsmen and pull off the wedding of your dreams.
Perfect, right?
Enter Doug Harris, embodied by Josh Gad. He is out of his league, engaged to materialistic pretty-girl Gretchen Palmer, played by Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, who is essentially just reimagining her role as Penny in “The Big Bang Theory.”
Doug tells Gretchen tall tales of his groomsmen and best man leaving out one key fact — they don’t exist. Then, just when everything is about to fall apart, Jimmy Callahan offers his professional best man services.
When Doug tells Jimmy he will also need seven groomsmen, Jimmy has to pull off something he never has before — a service he names the Golden Tux.
Under the pretense that Jimmy will not become Doug’s actual best friend — only his best man — the duo embarks on a journey to pull off the ultimate hustle.
Anyone who has ever seen “Hitch” can see how this is going to play out.
In an effort not to ruin the movie for anyone, I won’t give away the ending, only a few hints.
There will be epiphanies by Doug and Jimmy that will alter their courses in life and the final outcome of the wedding.
Though the movie did not have me on the edge of my seat, I was able to get past the awful clichés and enjoy the humor in the film.
After seeing “American Sniper” the night before and bawling my eyes out, it was refreshing to watch a calm, relaxing film that was predictable but funny.
This film will remind you to embrace the best you. And, if anything, this film will remind you to cherish your true friends, never settle and always attempt to live life to the fullest.
Cliché, I know.
Allison Wagner
