Directed by Jake Szymanski
Produced by Peter Chernin, Jonathan Levine,
David Ready, Jenno Topping
Written by Andrew J. Cohen, Brendan O’Brien
Starring Zac Efron, Adam DeVine, Anna Kendrick
Aubrey Plaza, Stephen Root, Sam Richardson
Stephanie Faracy, Sugar Lyn Beard, Chloe Bridges,
Kumail Nanjiani, Alice Wetterlund, Mary Holland
Why do we go to the movies? For some, it continues to be a shared experience; sit in a darkened theater with an audience and watch a story unfold as it’s projected on a screen in front of you.
For others, it’s an even more simple answer; to share an emotion, whether it’s sadness, joy, anger, hope or even nostalgia.
But for millions of moviegoers, the reason to pay ten dollars or more and sit amongst strangers eating overpriced snacks for a couple of hours which watching images unfold at 24 frames a second is simple; they want to be entertained.
Which brings us to the new release, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, a mouthful of a title that explains the plot of the film fairly succinctly. Mike and Dave is not a good film and despite it being based on a true story, it’s not even particularly believable.
But it is entertaining.
Dave and Mike Stengal (Efron and DeVine) are two loud, well-intentioned brothers who have brought disaster to every family event they attend with their hard partying over the top behavior. And now, with their younger sister Jeanie set to marry her fiance, Eric in Hawaii, the Stengal brothers are warned by their father that they must bring wedding dates and reign in their behavior so as not to ruin Jeannie’s ceremony.
Where do two saavy guys find dates? Craigsist. Quickly, the duo are flooded with offers from women looking for a Hawaiian vacation. Their ad goes viral and soon they find themselves pitching themselves on local television. That’s where they catch the attention of party girl Tatiana (Plaza) and her best friend, the recently abandoned at the alter Alice (Kendrick). Tatiana and Alice push all right buttons of the Stengal brothers and soon find themselves in Hawaii.
From there, the antic begin as the girls slowly reveal their true personalities which are far more extreme than Mike and Dave ever were.
And with that comes the antics and hijinks.
There’s no need to spoil any other reveals than you’ve already seen in the marketing, but simply Mike and Dave is funny and succeeds for a large part because of the comic timing and delivery of the four leads. The film is unexepectedly sweet and you’ll leave the theater with a smile on your face.
I was entertained.
