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Cancel Reservations to See ‘You’re Cordially Invited’

Will Ferrell, Reese Witherspoon waste their talents in desperate wedding comedy

Wedding planners know all the best decisions in the world aren’t always enough.

Planning matters, of course, but life sometimes gets in the way. “You’re Cordially Invited” echoes that hard truth.

The creator of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” assembles a killer cast, from charming leads to scene-stealing sidekicks, and sets them against a can’t-miss premise. What if a wedding destination double-booked the big day?

And, for a spell, the Prime Video original doesn’t miss. There’s still plenty of story to be told, and writer/director Nicholas Stoller (“Bros“) shows his planning came up woefully short.

You're Cordially Invited - Final Trailer | Prime Video

Will Ferrell stars as Jim, a widower trying to give his now-adult daughter Jenni (a grating Geraldine Viswanathan, “Drive-Away Dolls”) the wedding of her dreams. His plan backfires when the island retreat fails to mark his reservation down on the calendar (don’t ask…).

Another wedding party snags the same date.

That’s led by Reese Witherspoon’s Margot, a hard-charging TV producer who wants her kid sister to have her own dream wedding.

The parties quickly resolve the conflict. They’ll split the island’s resources and make the best of a sorry situation. Problem solved, but that wouldn’t yield wacky high jinks, would it?

Tensions flare. Jim’s overprotective ways get the better of him. The canvas expands to include Margot’s family, including a stern matriarch (Celia Weston) and a horny relative (a fitfully funny Leanne Morgan).

So far, so engaging. We don’t quite know where the plot will go, but we’ll happily hang around these characters until we find out.

Turns out even Stoller isn’t sure where to steer the story.

“You’re Cordially Invited” leans into cringe comedy one moment, then heart-tugging asides the next. The script is littered with profanity but lacks the giddy chaos of the best R-rated comedies.

Weston’s character is the embodiment of Southern hospitality at its worst.

At first. The script can’t make up its mind about her. The same is true for our main characters.

Jim is sweet and then vindictive, and the personality shifts don’t gel. Jenni is worse, dressing down Daddy for using the wrong term for a woman. Who knew “Lady” was so offensive?

That woke rant stops the film cold. Exhausting.

The film’s tone keeps on shifting, and the modest laughs soon dry up. 

Comedies rarely draw attention to their scores, but “You’re Cordially Invited” makes the very most of its musical accompaniment. It’s beautiful, then bombastic, goosing the better comic scenes and papering over the worst.

Can’t blame composer Michael Andrews for the film’s flaws. We still could use less of strained comic bits like the Jim/Jenni “Islands in the Stream” duet.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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The third act features a romance that literally comes out of the blue, makes no sense and feels like a sop to the laziest rom-com tropes. And the film’s signature sight gag, Jim wrestling an alligator, is so aggressively dumb that it undercuts any comic potential.

The end credits find Ferrell and Witherspoon singing, flirting and dancing in ways that make us wish the clips made it into the actual film.

We’d love an invite to that comedy, not the one preceding it.

HiT or Miss: “You’re Cordially Invited” starts with promise but ends up squandering the talents of all involved.

14 Comments

  1. My husband & I just watched it last night. I’m a fan of Leanne Morgan. I think your review of the movie is spot on. We thought the scuz words weren’t needed. The “Islands In The Stream” song sung by father & daughter made us cringe.

    1. Garbage and waste of good actors and good talents, but who cares, because woke Hollywood already destroyed them years ago

    1. Glad you enjoyed it … we can all agree to disagree. I really like both Witherspoon and Ferrell (and I though their singing/dancing during the end credits should have found its way into the film!)

  2. I wonder if Jack McBrayer is going to continue his string of typecasted roles as a dim Southerner in this movie.

  3. Oh, for heaven’s sake, lighten up. This movie is hilarious fluffy fun, try not to take everything so seriously.

  4. That’s because it was never intended to be a movie that entertains. Instead, it’s nothing but a vehicle for the embedded woke lecture about the correct term for “woman.”

    Exhausting, indeed. But not for me. My sincere thanks to Christian Toto for sounding the woke alarm and saving 2 hours of my life. I salute you!

    1. Ferrell’s talent has been pretty much all cringe comedy, which isn’t comedy at all. I wish him well, but I am not a fan of that genre and really wish it would die off. It pains me to be unable to forget his cheer and organist characters on SNL. Such a terrible era, such an awful plague of unfunny Lorne Michaels films…

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