'You're Cordially Invited' to a pretty sad comedy
It’s so easy to picture the chalkboard as the studio feebly brainstorms a less generic title than “You’re Cordially Invited” for a comedy about a double-booked destination wedding venue. Cross off “It Takes Two” (Olsen Twins), “2 Become 1” (Spice Girls), “Double Team” (Rodman), “Ticket to Paradise” (Roberts), “Duplicity” (Roberts again, and that’s not what duplicity means). “Ah, whatever,” everyone agrees.
Whatever indeed: The cinematic equivalent of settling for someone you don’t want, “You’re Cordially Invited” tumbles writer-director Nicholas Stoller back to “Neighbors 2” levels of strained desperation, undoing the good will from 2022’s terrific “Bros” and going broad where the underrated “The Five-Year Engagement” considered wedding problems through characters that seemed like they could exist in real life. Of course, the latter was a simple, effective dance between time and feelings; Stoller’s latest is merely a contrived test of patience, seemingly inspired by a “Saved by the Bell” episode and spinning a casting wheel that lands on something nobody wants to see.
The weak setup: Widower Jim Caldwell (Will Ferrell, not the former Detroit Lions head coach playing himself) books his daughter Jenni’s (Geraldine Viswanathan) wedding only to have the woman taking the reservation, who was using a pen without any ink left, die moments later. A much more official reservation is made for Neve (Meredith Hagner), giving her single, career-focused sister Margot (Reese Witherspoon) opportunity to battle with and — this uneasily attempting to be a rom-com — maybe light some sparks with Jim. Except Witherspoon and Ferrell have the chemistry of, I don’t know, think of anyone who’s made a lot of love stories and someone who hasn’t and shouldn’t. Jennifer Lopez and Gary Oldman? That’d be worse, but the age difference is pretty close and you get the idea.
“Is It Dead?” asks one of the many reality shows Margot produces. That’s one of the funniest moments here, but it’s also a question that repeatedly surfaces about the narrative during a saggy 100-some minutes in which laughs appear sporadically and neither the escalating anger nor the supposed affection rings remotely true. Poor Viswanathan gets a mic to the eye and worse, both physically and emotionally, while her character is one of the few I wanted to spend any time with. Too much of “You’re Cordially Invited” is immature shenanigans that hurt innocent people’s feelings, removing comic energy and turning bits into bummers.
“Arrested Development” should’ve prevented anyone else from trying an obliviously inappropriate family singing performance, and including a stripper here and a secret pregnancy there is just plotting by numbers. Stoller also misses a good opportunity for some meta fun when someone references Jim and Pam but says nothing about Deangelo Vickers.
Sure, I chuckled at the idea of Garden and Gun magazine. That’s an amusing pairing. Thinking that people root for the union of Witherspoon and Ferrell, or will hoot at a live alligator in a hotel room, is a long, long, long way from funny.
C-
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