Remember when Hollywood studios used to make comedies? And you could go to the movie theater and laugh at them with a roomful of strangers?
That was neat.
It would have been nice to watch You’re Cordially Invited that way. It’s a funny movie. A couple of the laughs are really big; the kind where, in a theater, people would scream and yell so much that you wouldn’t be able to hear the next couple lines. You don’t hear that sound much anymore.
Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. I guess I should just be happy the movie exists at all; that people can see it on Prime Video and laugh alone or with a couple of friends. It’s certainly still worth watching at home. (If you’ve already got Amazon Prime, you can’t beat the price.)
It’s got two bona fide comedy stars, Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, who’ve never made a movie together before but turn out to be an extremely complementary onscreen duo: Ferrell with his towering beta energy, and Witherspoon as the tiny alpha refusing to give an inch to his absurd demands and claims of superiority. With their odd couple physicality, they’re like an old fashioned comedy duo; an ideal visual mismatch.
READ MORE: Our Interview WIth You’re Cordially Invited Director Nicholas Stoller
It’s fitting, then, that Ferrell and Witherspoon have been plucked down into a classic screwball comedy premise. Ferrell’s Jim is the doting single dad of Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan), a free-spirited young woman who decides to marry her boyfriend Oliver (Stony Blyden). Jim’s picture belongs on Wikipedia’s “helicopter parent” page; he’s on tilt from the moment he learns his baby’s moving out for good. He thinks he’s reserved the picturesque island getaway where he married Jenni’s mother many years earlier for her nuptials — but a snafu leaves their names out of the venue’s calendar. So when Witherspoon’s Margot agrees to plan her sister Neve’s (Meredith Hagner) wedding to exotic dancer Dixon (Jimmy Tatro), she grabs the date Jim thinks he’s got on hold.
Jenni’s best friend takes over the rest of her wedding planning, and she’s not entirely on the ball, which is how both parties arrive for their weddings at the same time each believing they are entitled to the same cramped space. Margot works in reality television and she’s just as intense as Jim. They each try to play nice for a bit, and agree to share the tiny inn and its limited options for the two wedding ceremonies and receptions. But what would the movie be if everyone got along? Instead, tensions rise until Jim and Margot are flinging profanities and the occasional wild animal at one another.
On the one hand, the extremes Jim and Margot go to in order to screw with each other are absolutely ridiculous. (I was not kidding about the wild animal thing.) On the other hand, I have seen real people lose their minds while stewing in the pressure cooker of a lavish destination wedding. And even if some of what happens in You’re Cordially Invited is far fetched, it’s no more ludicrous than the more fanciful twists in other Ferrell comedies.
And that’s how Ferrell plays You’re Cordially Invited. Jim is a classic Will Ferrell character; a sweet soul with a limitless capacity for outrage and fury at any perceived slight or injustice. Writer/director Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Neighbors) gives Ferrell plenty of room to improvise and goof around — and a surprisingly game scene partner in Witherspoon, who emerges as his feistiest female co-star since Christina Applegate in the Anchorman films.
Witherspoon also has a whole chunk of the movie to herself, where she explores Margot’s family history with a deep cast of supporting players, including the wonderful Celia Weston as Margot’s perpetually disappointed, politely disagreeable mother.
This is not a complicated movie, although based on how rarely Hollywood even attempts to make something like it these days, you’d think that it were. Stoller cooked up a solid premise, assembled a funny cast, gave them some good scenes to play and lines to deliver, and let them do their thing. Ferrell looks rejuvenated here, giving possibly his funniest performance in years. (His line where he reveals Jim’s job is possibly the hardest I’ve laughed at any movie since Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar in 2021.) I say possibly because without having seen this movie with a packed crowd on opening night, it’s tough to know for sure.
RATING: 7/10
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