Review of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) by Kaptenvideo — 30 Sep 2017

A raunchy comedy about hard-partying brothers Mike (Adam Devine, Zac Efron) who start a public campaign to find perfect dates (Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza) for their sister’s Hawaiian wedding, so the family would be pleased for once. Supposedly based on a true story.

American mainstream comedies have a lot of improvised dialogue and scenes these days which can be great. Also, as in this case, it can bring mediocre results when there’s not much content backing all that impro-ing, or the players are not able to get creative enough.

In this case, there’s enough story for an unpretentious 98 minute entertainment but the dialogue remains generic and performances feel uninspired.

Both leading men, Efron and Devine, have done this sort of thing so much that they're always kind of cool. But the leading ladies, Aubrey and Kendrick, don’t impress at all. They don’t develop much of a flow of their own and settle for copying the guys.

Dirty jokes are not that good either, and the blissful massage section which is supposed to be one of the major setpieces, is just painfully unfunny.

„Mike and Dave“ comes from the writers of „Neighbors“ and „Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising“ but offers none of the fun and energy of said comedies, not that these were true classics or anything.

It certainly doesn’t help that at least three of the four leads have done this sort of thing way too much in recent past. It’s hard to get excited again when all you’re seeing is a case of SSDD.