Mike and Dave Need Wed­ding Dates

It might be unfair to com­pare this aggres­sive­ly aver­age gross-out com­e­dy – which sits in some depress­ing space between Train­wreck and Dirty Grand­pa – to a clas­sic mod­ern com­e­dy like Step Broth­ers. Yet both films rely on a sim­i­lar premise: two broth­ers who are well into adult­hood strug­gle to act grown up. But if Adam McKay’s 2008 film sug­gest­ed that stay­ing true to one­self while being a respectable adult was in fact the easy, cow­ard­ly way out, Mike and Dave Need Wed­ding Dates argues the exact oppo­site. It is anoth­er rau­cous ode to het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty, cap­i­tal­ism and mar­ried life which bru­tal­ly rejects all alter­na­tives as child­ish or horrific.

But first, let’s talk about the com­e­dy. The film is based on the ​‘true sto­ry’ of two broth­ers look­ing for nice girls to be their dates at their sister’s wed­ding. Events fol­low a clear nar­ra­tive tra­jec­to­ry, but with the humour most­ly impro­vised – as con­firmed by bloop­ers in the end cred­its – the sto­ry often appears as mere­ly a sup­port­ing frame­work for one lin­ers, extend­ed riffs and self-con­tained jokes. Mike and Dave does not exploit this struc­ture to its full poten­tial, and the awk­ward script (“Hey! Maybe these two girls could be our dates!”) seems to restrain the improv tal­ents of the cast. This plays to Zac Efron’s advan­tage, who acquits him­self well as the clue­less Dave in con­trast to the irri­ta­ble Adam DeVine as Mike.

The jokes – rang­ing from sar­cas­tic remarks to weird nois­es, to fun­ny voic­es and end­less rep­e­ti­tion of the thing that wasn’t amus­ing the first time – are often not fun­ny in them­selves, but the char­ac­ters make them up with­in a banal space. Which makes sense, giv­en that our pro­tag­o­nists self-iden­ti­fy as fun­ny. Yet the film itself is uncer­tain about being on their side or con­temp­tu­ous of them, which leaves us feel­ing rather dis­ori­ent­ed, stuck between a smile and a con­fused frown. Like an uncle anx­ious­ly fill­ing every minute of a fam­i­ly gath­er­ing with as many jokes as pos­si­ble, the film relent­less­ly beats the view­er into sub­mis­sion to the extent that you become numb to the sex­ism, homo­pho­bia, trans­pho­bia and casu­al misog­y­ny that’s scat­tered in.

The con­ser­v­a­tive mes­sage here is that true hap­pi­ness is found not in excess, but in hav­ing a nice girl­friend, get­ting mar­ried and mak­ing mon­ey. Like Train­wreck before it, Mike and Dave aligns itself with the per­spec­tive of its tar­get audi­ence of imma­ture grown-ups striv­ing to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­form and have fun. And if the man-child’s ulti­mate desire not to dis­ap­point their par­ents was believ­able and touch­ing in Step Broth­ers, here it’s sim­ply a plot point set to occur mechan­i­cal­ly two thirds into the film’s run­time, with­out any real moti­va­tion behind it.

The oblig­a­tory emo­tion­al con­fes­sion scene, where the boys and girls final­ly open up to one anoth­er, is so blunt­ly deliv­ered that it feels as if it was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for the actors to impro­vise around. How­ev­er, this being the one sin­cere sequence where no jokes are allowed, improv is sad­ly for­bid­den. So we’re left with Aubrey Plaza’s Tatiana and Devine, appar­ent­ly help­less, lit­er­al­ly say­ing to one anoth­er, ​“Hey lis­ten to this one: I think I’m so cool, but some­times I think, actu­al­ly, I’m real­ly not!” This tal­ent­ed group of actors deserve better.