I’m not going to front and say the rom-com isn’t in trouble. Hallmark, Lifetime, and other cable channels are finding an economic boon with the genre, and Sydney Sweeney’s Anyone But You made bank, but in the sense of vehicles for major stars, we’re in a lot of trouble. Part of this is because no one has chemistry anymore. After all, the casting process has been cannibalized to bypass any screen or chemistry tests and instead rely on social media follower count.
If Nicholas Stoller’s You’re Cordially Invited is any kind of barometer, we’re spiraling. In the film’s defense, it’s not a rom-com until the end, where it feels like it suddenly remembers it should have been. You’re Cordially Invited is a mess that is barely kept afloat by a game cast and Stoller’s clever directorial flourishes. If only he understood pacing.
Stoller, who also wrote the script, attempts to create a caustic, tender, blistering comedy of errors about two jerks battling it out as their loved ones stand by in disbelief. The film has a lot of venom and a shocking depth of humanity, but despite his work on Neighbors and Neighbors 2, You’re Cordially Invited lacks any cinematic pugilistic chops. The setting, a serene island in Georgia, is an ironic backdrop to the harried, volcanic, nasty jabs and punches the characters throw at one another.
On one side of the ring, Will Ferrell plays Jim, the doting single father of Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan), trying to plan his daughter’s wedding. On the other side, Reese Witherspoon plays Margot, a reality TV producer without a filter, who attempts to give her little sister Never (Meredith Hagner) her dream wedding. Jim and Margot have both planned their respective weddings at the small Georgia island resort of Palmetto. Hilarity and slapstick ensue.
When You’re Cordially Invited is funny, it’s hysterical. Ferrell and Withserponn are old hands at this kind of comedy. Whatever his faults, Stoller understands that if you stack your cast with enough heavy hitters, the batting average is significantly improved. The comedic talents of Jack McBrayer, Fortune Feimster, and dramatic heavyweights such as Celia Watson all help keep the film from being dragged too much.
But the pacing of Stoller’s script is abysmal. A movie about two competing people trying to pull off a wedding shouldn’t have another hour to go after the weddings. Nor should there be an attempt to pad the runtime with a little extra romance into the movie in the last fifteen minutes and try to play it off as if it’s been something the film has been leading up to.
Yet, while Stoller’s script lacks the right balance of caustic wit and pathos, he does manage to create fleshed-out characters. The drama of the characters starts seemingly cliched, only to slowly reveal itself to be much more complicated, rooted more in humanism rather than comedic structure.
The relationships are revealed to be fraught with real misunderstandings and psychic wounds unintentionally inflicted upon each other. As much as Ferrel’s Jim and Withserpoon’s Margot would be psychos in the real world, they are granted small moments of grace as Stoller shows them to be merely people so mired in loneliness and pain they do not see the harm they inflict.
Witherspoon and Watson, in particular, share a heart-wrenching scene simply because of Stoller’s deft touch and the actor’s ability to find humanity in what a lesser movie would have reduced to comedic caricature. The scene moved me to near tears because of how Watson and Witherspoon navigated a scene filled with confessions of trauma, fear, and a deep longing to make the other understand that they love them.
At its core, You’re Cordially Invited is a movie about people who are so filled with love they don’t know how to express it and so starved for love they are afraid to lose it. If Stoller had more of a rein on the material, it is likely You’re Cordially Invited would have been a comedic masterpiece. But it needs the touch of Mike Nichols or Elaine May, not some Judd Apatow acolyte.
The result is You’re Cordiall Invited has a solid funny bone, a big heart, and a clever mind, but they are disproportioned and disconnected from one another. Stoller will occasionally stumble upon Kismet, and all the stars will align, but so much of the comedy seems to come from adlibs, the drama from studiously observed writing, and the narrative being hung out to dry.
Calling You’re Cordially Invited a mess would be accurate but also misleading. When it works, it works. But when it doesn’t, the two leads are left to drift, mug for the camera, and find little help from Stoller’s direction or script.
Images courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios
Have strong thoughts about this piece you need to share? Or maybe there’s something else on your mind you’re wanting to talk about with fellow Fandomentals? Head on over to our Community server to join in the conversation!
