If you wish The Hangover had more of a found-footage feel — and no Bradley Cooper, and more bros getting peed on — here's an offbeat treat for you. You might not have heard of this one, and unless you happened to be at an Alamo Drafthouse this weekend, you probably haven't seen it. But if you're anyone I went to undergrad with, you absolutely should.
Paramount released Drunk Wedding direct to iTunes this weekend. I bought it, and I watched it, and I can report that while you may not know all of the actors and it won't get the usual blockbuster ad campaign, it's quite the tequila-soaked barrel of fun.
Just so we're on the same page here, Citizen Kane this is not. No. Drunk Wedding is a Gonzo faux-doc raunchy travelogue wedding comedy that takes its pants off early and often. It's dialed in tight and quite nicely paced, its modest 1:20 runtime a steady drumbeat of redband-worthy gags, pranks, and awww-shoot moments. Shooting on location in Nicaragua brings immediacy to the action, though the film is not without its issues in this regard: The found-footage style demands a certain gritty realism that doesn't always mesh well with the clearly quite decent cameras actually used here, and the cinematography occupies that strange reality/scripted middle ground that reminds me of an early dose of The Hills. (Nothing that a goat won't fix.) The writing is solid, at times laugh out loud hilarious, but set against the whole average-joes-filming-themselves trope it sometimes feels overwritten, too smart for its premise. (Too clever for your own good, Nick and Tony Weiss?) Interestingly, Drunk Wedding shares something in common with Take Me Home Tonight, another collegiate comedy I really liked: both languished on the shelf for a couple of years before their release.
Quibbles aside, Drunk Wedding is here now and delivers what you're crashing it for — some memorable characters (Dan Gill is terrific as Phil, Nick P. Ross is deliciously creepy as Linc aka Beavis incarnate, and Victoria Gold does a great job as the girls' girl bride Elissa), some quality pranking, and an almost but not quite home movie feel.
This is also the kind of movie you'll want all your friends to see, so your party-prone social circle has ready access to the bank of soon-to-be-iconic-at-least-to-us references. I will say though that if your "hey, this is just like the time" moments overlap very much with this film, your parties are off the flippin' chain, bro.
Haus Verdict: Loved it. Small on budget and big on raunch, Drunk Wedding is just what it sounds like — and if you're in the market for that, take a look.
