“Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” takes a clever premise, casts the right actors and peppers the narrative with solid gags for an hour and a half of exactly the kind of stupid humor the trailer promises. The cast has done variations on this material before: Zac Efron in “Neighbors,” Aubrey Plaza in “Parks and Recreation” and Anna Kendrick and Adam Devine in “Pitch Perfect.” Here, they make those characters a couple notches weirder and more unstable in the latest entry in the “girls can be as dumb as guys” comedy subgenre.
“Mike and Dave” succeeds in this subgenre where “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” fell short a couple months ago. Both films were written by Andrew Jay Cohen and Brendan O’Brien, so I guess the second time is a charm. The jokes seem to flow better from this destination wedding premise, whereas the “Neighbors” sequel was a bit forced.
“Office Space’s” Stephen Root qualifies as the straight man; he’s the irritated dad of perpetual adolescents Mike (Devine) and Dave (Efron). But everyone else is some degree of self-centered, dumb goofball, including the two “respectable” dates that the dad demands Mike and Dave bring to their sister Jeanie’s (Sugar Lyn Beard) nuptials in Hawaii. The dark secret is that Tatiana (Plaza) and Alice (Kendrick) are just as aimless and ridiculous as the boys. In most scenes, the audience has to be its own straight man.
“Mike and Dave” has some great guest turns. The highlight is Kumail Nanjiani — who I know from “The X-Files Files” podcast but who is also a hilarious play-it-straight comedy actor — as a masseur who delivers the full package to Jeanie. Alice Wetterlund also gets a crazy sauna sex scene as conniving Cousin Terry, and Sam Richardson, as pragmatic husband Eric, even gets an over-the-top moment.
The revelation among the cast is Beard, whose resume mostly consists of voice work. Although she’s mostly the put-upon sister, the high-pitched-voiced actress isn’t just a plot device, as she comes under the influence of the bad girls. This also is a coming-out party for Devine, who a lot of people know from “Modern Family” and other TV roles, but who gets his first big movie turn here.
The gags and set pieces are a mix of stupidly funny and inspired. I wouldn’t have guessed the dilophosaurus scene from “Jurassic Park” could be mined for comedy gold, but there it is. If there’s a downside to “Mike and Dave,” it’s that it whiffs on bathroom humor, despite teasing a riff on a “Wedding Crashers” laxative gag. It has the requisite sex and drug scenes, though, and keeps up the momentum except for a slight lull in the final act.
Although it’s purposely shallow, the “real” moments in “Mike and Dave” – where the characters have realizations about themselves and their relationships – play pretty well within the movie’s context. And I like how the relationships between Mike and Tatiana and Dave and Alice unfold in different ways. So “Mike and Dave” almost qualifies as one of those crass comedies with heart, like the kind Judd Apatow used to make.
Mostly, though, it’s just dumb humor smartly delivered.