Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This script has to have been written by an 8 year old. Both actors are generally very funny in other roles, but this is an abomination. The most far fetched unrealistic scenarios(with nothing funny to redeem them) the bachelor party, random other wedding events outside of the main plot and the closing airplane scene are just 3 examples of scenes written by writers who have never walked the earth as adults.Ridiculous and far fetched are just fine when they are funny, There is nothing funny about this movie.Avoid at all costs.

So guy is going to marry a girl who we think loves him, (until conveniently right near the end after he met a stripper once) and suddenly she becomes a b word who we are supposed to be hoping he breaks up with. Then he does and gets with the stripper at the end. Reminiscent of it's big brother The Hangover where married guy breaks up with his ball and chain wife for a stripper he met once. Every guys dream must be to get with a stripper and have a relationship with them instead of their boring wives if the high ratings for these movies are anything to go by. As if strippers will be fun all the time and really love them after meeting them once. Throw in some hopeless friends and animals and really it is the Hangover boy movie Mach II.

2005's 'Hitch' starring Will Smith and Kevin James was a surprisingly big box office hit. So for another film ten years later to copy the concept makes sense. 'The Wedding Ringer' has a number of similarities to that film, mostly in terms of its two stars acting style and appearance. The problem however is that neither have close to the charisma or acting abilities or the previous two. Smith and James found a terrific chemistry and played off each other perfectly. Kevin Hart and Josh Gad on the other hand looked like they were in separate movies. They never found any common ground and were rarely able to make the audience laugh.The movie also had the potential to have some real heart with a strong ending. Instead though, it decides to throw everything out the window and leave you with what is really quite a bleak ending when you stop and think about it. A couple of good moments abound here and there. 'The Usual Suspects' spoof was brilliantly done and even gave me goosebumps, and the final line of the entire film was unquestionably the best of the lot. In between those moments though there's a lot of dull scenes that try to be either emotional or funny, and almost always fail to be either. Not a lot to see here.

Everything about this movie is bad. There is little to no character development and the whole movie seems rushed and badly written. It felt like a mash of scenes taken from other popular comedies and then ultimately tweaked making them even less funny than their counterparts.I mean I get it the writers have brought in Kevin Hart and made a familiar sounding title and a familiar sounding plot and then they've tried to cram in all of the tried and tested methods from every popular romantic comedy over the last 10 years. The main plot is a mix between the movies Hitch and I Love You Man and the family scenes feel like recreations from movies like The Wedding Crashers and Meet The Fockers and then we have the male bonding/ party scenes that are recreations of films like Old School and The Hangover. But the problem is just that, the film feels like a mash up of all of these familiar films with nothing new to offer.At first glance this movie seems to be a recipe for mainstream success but it forgets one major thing. If you're story sucks and your characters are shallow and poorly drawn then the film is going to be terrible no matter what actors you have or what popular themes and scenes from popular movies that you recreate.