The Wedding Ringer

"Ring"ing in the New Year

Three opening weekends into the new year, and we already have a film that is going to be hard to top for "Dud of the Year". Jeremy Garelick directed and co-wrote (with Jay Lavender) a torturous comedy about a loner (Josh Gad) who needs a best man and groomsmen for his wedding, so he turns to a best-man-for-hire (Kevin Hart) to handle this for him. Once you get over how awful that premise is, you are then bombarded with scene after scene of lame homophobic and fat jokes, and bad set-ups that are a series of disconnected ideas thrown together haphazardly. It is not a good sign in any movie when a Joe Namath cameo is the most humorous thing that happens.

At no point do you come to care enough about Gad's character, or his relationship, to want to know whether or not his wedding goes well. Garelick gives you such a horrendous introduction to him at the top of the movie, and finds a dozen ways to make him pathetic, but never sympathetic. As the eponymous character, Kevin Hart does his normal fast talking, scheme hatching Kevin Hart bit. It's fine that he has found a niche in cinema, but as we found out with last January's "Ride Along", this character isn't enough to sustain a leading role. When you get him bit characters, and cameos, like Chris Rock's "Top Five", you get some honest laughs from him. The rest of the ensemble doesn't get much better, and too many wacky people are introduced too fast to find any decent characters among the bunch. After a while they have heaped so many zany characters on you, that it begins to feel like overkill when they give even more. Do yourself a huge favor, and skip this one.

Grade: F
3D: N/A
Easter Egg: None

Starring: Josh Gad, Kevin Hart, Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting
Director: Jeremy Garelick
Writer(s): Jeremy Garelick & Jay Lavender
RT: 101 min
Rating: R for crude and sexual content, language throughout, some drug use and brief graphic nudity.