Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 29, 2016

There’s a charming moment relatively late in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels where the two con men at the center of the story figure out maybe they’re not the only ones running a scam. Something at least somewhat similar is at play in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, though it’s obvious in this film who’s gaming whom from the get go. This is a film whose “high concept” (supposedly culled from a real life incident) is revealed more or less in totality by its title. Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) Stangle are two well meaning but still ne’er do well brothers who have had a long history of destroying family get togethers through their misbegotten antics. It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that the family has arranged for an “intervention” of sorts, one replete with a homemade video documenting their previous brushes with infamy where people have been badly injured and personal property destroyed in conflagrations. This family intervention is all for a good cause, though—their sister Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard) is about to tie the knot, and in one of this film’s few attempts at subtlety, it’s hinted that there’s already drama aplenty due to the fact that her fiancé Eric (Sam Richardson) is black. Jeanie expressly begs her brothers to behave this time at her upcoming nuptials, and the family’s blustery father Burt (Stephen Root) insists the best way for that to happen is if the boys bring “nice girl” dates along with them, girls who will keep them and check and (hopefully) keep them from marauding through any other single women at the event. While initially a little offended at how their family has perceived them, the brothers relent, especially after Jeanie’s plea, and they decide to place a Craig’s List ad offering a free vacation to Hawaii (where the wedding is going to be held) as the lure to recruit two acceptable females to fulfil the assignment. In a none too surprising turn of events, they’re overrun with thousands of responses, something that gets them a spot on The Wendy Williams Show, which is where two hard drinking, party hearty girls named Alice (Anna Kendrick) and Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) see them and decide this is a “job” for them, this despite the fact that virtually no one (including the women themselves) would think of them as "nice girls".

Much of the humor of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates stems from the fact that while the boys believe they’re the “smooth operators” of the bunch, getting two (seemingly) well behaved women to accompany them on a trip in order to impress the boys’ family, it’s obviously Alice and Tatiana who are the brains of this particular operation, cleaning themselves up and presenting themselves as a teacher (Tatiana) and manager of a hedge fun (Alice). The two girls are on various rebounds of their own, something that in fact has led to their decision to pursue a “new” adventure. Both have just been fired from their waitress jobs for showing up drunk (again), which in turn has stemmed from Alice’s inability to let go of being jilted at the altar recently. That nicely sets Alice up as an emotionally fragile sort who probably shouldn’t be attending a wedding in any case, and Tatiana as her supposed caretaker who is probably too narcissistic to really effectively perform those duties.

Once the quartet gets to Hawaii, the film plays out in a series of vignettes, some of which are funny if squirm worthy (Tatiana catches the eye of the boys’ lesbian cousin, played brilliantly by Alice Wetterlund looking like an androgynous Justin Bieber, if that’s not already an oxymoron), and others which go for the gusto in terms of ridiculous sight gags (an accident with an ATV leaves the bride less than picture pretty with one day to go until her wedding). Performances are generally quite winning, and in fact the film’s deficits are at least somewhat overcome by the efforts of an energetic cast, even if Adam Devine resorts to his seemingly inescapable need to mug mercilessly.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates has some undeniably hilarious material, much of it stemming from Aubrey Plaza’s adeptly arch take on Tatiana, but this is a film that should have been non stop laughs instead of the lurching comedy it turns out to be. It’s obvious from some of the supplemental material included on the Blu-ray that the cast was encouraged to improvise, and unfortunately some of the funniest material from those sessions didn’t make it into the film (as evidenced by the supplements). That loosey-goosey affect tends to give the film a suitably raunchy tone, and some of the sight gags and even verbal humor hit their mark, but considering the combined charisma of the four leads and the general tenor of the film, maybe what Mark and Dave really needed was either a better screenplay or a director who trusted the cast to take off on their own flights of fancy, disregarding what was on the printed page.

My colleague Brian Orndorf was apparently much less won over by the silliness of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates than I was. You can read Brian's thoughts on the film here.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Shot digitally with Arri Alexa and Red Dragon cameras (according to the IMDb), this candy colored enterprise is quite engaging from a visual standpoint, especially once the film moves to its tropical locale. Here, in bright sun dappled environments, the palette pops with a variety of bright primaries and lustrous pastels, and detail levels on everything from fabric textures to hair to skin pores is outstanding. Some of the location photography in a couple of the vignettes (notably the ATV sequence) is really stunning, with awesome depth of field and great detail levels on vast masses of foliage. There's just a bit of murk and even a very slight dusting of noise in a couple of the darker scenes, including a nighttime party sequence. Contrast and black levels are both consistent, and there are no issues with image instability.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates has a suitably rambunctious DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 that attains its full immersive capabilities in crowded scenes like some of the beachside or poolside sequences in Hawaii, but which also affords some relatively unusual sound effects to dot the surrounds in moments like the aforementioned ATV scenes. Dialogue is very cleanly rendered and typically well prioritized, though a couple of overly noisy party scenes result in lines sounding just slightly buried. Fidelity is top notch and dynamic range quite wide for a comedy.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 23:48)


• Extended Scenes (1080p; 39:12)


• Alternate Storyline Pig Sequence (1080p; 7:45) is my new favorite title for a supplement.


• Bits on Bits on Bits (1080p; 6:21) is a compendium of gags.


• Line-O-Rama (1080p; 10:02) is another group of riffs.


• Gag Reel (1080p; 5:27)


• Funny or Die Shorts (1080p; 6:40)


• Commentary by Jake Szymanski


• Gallery (1080p; 3:23) offers either a manual advance or an auto advance option. The timing is for the auto advance option.


• Theatrical Trailers (1080p; 4:48)

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It probably goes without saying that Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is hardly comedy in the Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde mold, but if it's accepted on its own at times scabrous merits, there are numerous if inconsistent laughs to be had. The film has charisma to spare, but it could have used either a tighter screenplay or a director who simply threw caution to the wind and let his cast really go for the improvisational gusto. Technical merits are first rate, and with caveats noted, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates comes Recommended.