Mike and Dave are brothers who party hard…so hard that their family is frustrated at how they ruin every even. To be allowed at their sister’s wedding, they are required to bring respectable dates. Mike and Dave get the idea to go on TV and put the call out to get some classy ladies. Alice and Tatiana are lazy who cannot hold a job, in part because they would rather lay around smoking weed. They see Mike and Dave and decide to con their way into a free Hawaiian vacation on Mike and Dave’s dime. Crazy adventures follow.
Well, more like “Standard Comedy Misadventures.” As you might suspect, the ruse is discovered, things fall apart and then the leads must fix their screw up. It is a pretty standard trope. The problem for this film is nothing distracts you from the highly predictable beats.
Most of the characters are very loose sketches. And while I suspect it is intentional, Adam Levine’s Mike is far less sympathetic than Efron as Dave. This is mirrored in Plaza’s Tatiana and Anna Kendrick’s Alice. But that ends up working against the film. While there are funny points, nothing makes the movie stand out. It is trying to be in the vein of Wedding Crashers, but feels like a film trying real hard to look like it is pushing envelopes…but even those moments feel heavily cliched.
The film had a lot of potentials, as it has an excellent comedic cast. I went in hoping to really enjoy this film as some crazy farce. Instead, I found long stretches where the film comes to a standstill. At barely over an hour and a half, this is not a good thing.
In the end, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is a derivative comedy that is mildly amusing…but I suspect will largely be forgotten.
Tripping Through Gateways 
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