BEFORE: My schedule's been a bit on-again, off-again, I'll be at the theater every other day for a week at a time, then I won't get a shift for the next week and a half. However, there's always the chance that someone will call in sick, and the management knows that I'm happy to cover a shift if I'm available. That's the thing about us older married people, we don't mind working on Friday night because it's date night, or Saturday clubbing or whatever it is the kids do, so I'll be there on Friday night or Sunday morning on short notice.
So Friday was a screening of an episode of "Lawmen: Bass Reeves", Sunday was "Nyad" with a Q&A panel after that had Kathleen Turner interviewing Annette Bening, and I got to run the elevator that allowed both actresses to appear on stage, as if by magic - just like how Taylor Swift gets on stage at her concerts, really. So that was fun, and tonight's another screening of "Maestro" with Bradley Cooper doing a Q&A after the film. Just another shift, right?
Jorge Garcia carries over from "The Wrong Missy".
THE PLOT: Two weeks shy of his wedding, a socially awkward guy enters into a charade by hiring the owner of a company that provides best men for grooms in need.
AFTER: I'm now six days in to the romance chain - not even a full week and I'm already showing signs of thematic burn-out, that's not good. But those first five films all had something in common, they basically followed the same formula, with two people NOT in a relationship because events keep preventing them from getting on the same page. In the case of "The Wrong Missy", those two people weren't just on the same page, they were in different books that were also not stored in the same library. But then, just before the end of the film, the situation changes, the stars align or someone has a revelation, and the relationship is now possible. Maybe it's easier to spot the formula once you watch five rom-coms in a row, but is this how screenwriters think relationships work - it's not possible, it's not possible, it's still not possible, oh, wait, now it's possible! Hurray!
Sure, I may be oversimplifying things just a bit, but I've been single, I've been married, divorced and married again, so I know a bit about what I'm talking about. I've also dated people who put me in the "Friend zone" and we've stayed that way for years, that's definitely a thing, but I don't think I would pursue someone for years with the hope of the impossible or improbable becoming possible, that feels like it would be a waste of time. Still, I guess I have to acknowledge that it's possible for the impossible to become possible, given enough time and enough changes due to circumstance. But that's not what we're dealing with tonight, this film's lead character is already engaged, to a woman that he feels is out of his league, and he'll do just about anything she requests, because he feels extremely lucky to be in the position he's in.
So, naturally, she wants a big elaborate expensive wedding, and he's afraid to tell her that he doesn't have any close friends willing to serve as his best man, hell, he doesn't really have any male friends at all. So that's the set-up, and when he hears there is someone out there who is providing best man services to various loner men in the same situation, he checks it out, and sure enough, he can hire a stand-in best man for the right price. Because that's so much easier than telling his wife the truth, that he has no friends, he's convinced himself that will be a deal-breaker for her. Also, I'm sure that starting off your marriage by turning your wedding ceremony and reception into a giant deception will have no repercussions whatsoever, right?
OF COURSE a wedding is a big production, and OF COURSE people try to out-do each other and show off, and OF COURSE it's a chance to spend money and demonstrate to other people that you have money to spend, but at the center of it all, ideally it should be about two people joining together in front of their friends and family and expressing and celebrating their love and commitment. However, collectively we've all built up these wedding rituals to be the end-all and be-all, and if something doesn't go perfectly right, if you don't get the centerpieces you wanted for the tables, or the band doesn't stick to your playlist, it's NOT the end of the world. However, for some people it might feel that way. So the question becomes, to what degree is everyone involved being sincere about everything, or has society turned the wedding game into some giant form of competition? And is this a healthy thing or an unhealthy thing?
Doug Harris, tax attorney, made the horrible mistake of lying to his wife, instead of saying that he had no available male friend, he concocted a fake one who's hard to contact because he's in the military, and even gave him a fake name, so stand-in best man Jimmy Callahan has to impersonate "Bic Mitchum" for two weeks leading up to the wedding, and Bic is supposedly an army chaplain. Now, Jimmy's in the habit of changing his name and back-story for every occasion, provided the price is right, but impersonating a priest is going to put a damper on his proclivity for getting some action from the bridesmaids. Also, Doug has no groomsmen, while his wife has seven bridesmaids, so Jimmy's organization has to re-hire some previous employees as stand-ins, to deliver the never-before-attempted "Golden Tux" level of service from The Best Man Inc. - provided that Doug's willing to pay $50,000 for the deluxe package.
There's a bachelor party involved, even though Doug said he didn't want one, and told his wife there wasn't going to be one, but hey, when you pay that much for seven groomsmen, I guess you get a bachelor party at the Sports Action Park thrown in for free. But the details of the wild bachelor party and ensuing high-speed chase with the police are probably best omitted here. Later the ragtag bunch of nine random strangers with new identities gets challenged to a brutal game of touch football with the bride's father, who somehow knows a bunch of football legends, including Joe Namath. Damn, if only I'd known, with a little more effort and a little more moving some movies around, I might have gotten this one to line up better with the Super Bowl - I was just six days off. But the football game and the bachelor party are there for a clear narrative reason, to get these nine men to have shared experiences, so they will bond better and be somewhat more believable as a group of friends during the reception. (Nope, they still really come off as nine random strangers who somehow know details about each other's fictional pasts.)
As for the relationship between Doug and his fiancée, Gretchen, there are some signs that maybe they're not the perfect partners for each other, after all. Doug's been acting like a doormat and conceding to all of her wedding demands and relationship rules because he lacks confidence, and he's convinced himself that this is necessary, because she's so out of his league. We're all just co-inhabitants of this crazy spaceship Earth, and so we're all just going to keep bouncing around and having both successful and unsuccessful relationships with each other, because what other choice do we have? Doug will never know if there's a better partner out there for him as long as he's with Gretchen, and I'm OK with that if he is, except that stripper from the bachelor party was pretty hot...
I'm not sure I agree with the attempt to make the bride the "villain" here, at least to some degree. When we find out that she's marrying for financial security, not love, is that really such a bad thing? People used to have arranged marriages where love wasn't even part of the picture, it has a much longer history as a business arrangement and a social construct than as a representation of "true love", if that phrase has any meaning at all. Also, she had her heart broken by her ex-fiancé Steve, so can you really blame her for marrying a guy that she's quite sure would never, ever cheat on her because he thinks that she's out of his league? It feels kind of like a smart decision made to ensure she never gets divorced, and I think that's kind of OK?
The important takeaway here - men are different than women, men are solitary types who don't enjoy making friends, unless that is somehow involved with deceiving women or in trying to sleep with them. Women, on the other hand, are more social creatures who only care about having elaborate weddings to impress their frenemies and using marriage as a construct to advance themselves in society. Yeah, we're going to have to look elsewhere for signs of true love, I'm sorry to say.
Still, this was good for some laughs, and a neat twist on the "Wedding Crashers" concept, like what if there weren't just two guests at the wedding who were pretending they belonged there, what if the best man and the groomsmen (and the bride, ultimately) were ALL pretending they belonged?
Also starring Kevin Hart (last seen in "The Man from Toronto"), Josh Gad (last heard in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"), Kaley Cuoco (last seen in "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"), Alan Ritchson (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl"), Cloris Leachman (last seen in "Betty White: First Lady of Television"), Mimi Rogers (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Ken Howard (last seen in "Better Living Through Chemistry"), Affion Crockett (last seen in "Pixels"), Jenifer Lewis (last heard in "The Addams Family" (2019)), Olivia Thirlby (last seen in "The Darkest Hour"), Justine Ezarik, Josh Peck (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Joe Namath (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), John Riggins, Ed “Too Tall” Jones (last seen in "Semi-Tough"), Aaron Takahashi (last seen in "Yes Man"), Dan Gill (last seen in "Crash Pad"), Corey Holcomb, GloZell Green (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Tristin Mays, Colin Kane (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Ignacio Serricchio (last seen in "The Mule"), Nicky Whelan (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Whitney Cummings (last seen in "How It Ends"), Jeffrey Ross (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Nikki Leigh, Lisa Donovan, Lindsay Pearce, Patrick Carlyle (last seen in "Rough Night"), Robert Towers, Neal Israel (last seen in "Johnny Dangerously"), Peter Gilroy, Amy Okuda (last seen in "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), David Burr, Anthony L. Fernandez, Ashley Jones, Trevor Brunsink, Mimi Gianopulos, Arianna Gomez, Sina J. Henrie, Trae Ireland.
RATING: 6 out of 10 varieties of ranch dressing
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