Stream It Or Skip It: ‘You’re Cordially Invited’ on Amazon Prime Video, a So-So Destination-Wedding Rom-Com Starring Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell

You’re Cordially Invited (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video) lures us to Yet Another Goddamn Destination-Wedding Rom-Com with stars Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell, who go mano-a-mano in a love-hate-love-hate-love-hate plot that has to end on one of those notes, right? Sure. The two stars live up to their personae here, playing an uptight, extremely put-together bossypants and a lovable goofy-ass schlub – no spoilers as to who plays which! The film is from writer/director Nicholas Stoller, the Apatowite behind Bros, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Five-Year Engagement; he manufactures, nurtures and exponentially escalates major-league hijinks for a wacky romp with middling returns. So maybe it’s worth approximately two-thirds of your attention span? Maybe. 

YOU’RE CORDIALLY INVITED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jim (Ferrell) is the doting widower dad to recent college grad Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan), who comes home with a surprise: Her fiancee, Oliver (Stony Blyden). Jim’s very existence hinges on his nurturing instincts – doing Jenni’s hair, baking her welcome-home cakes, urging her to never ever ever (ever!) move away – so of course the thought of having a son-in-law in full possession of his dear daughter’s heart draws out the type of deep insecurities that might just inspire some extreme emotions and actions on his part. But of course he’s supportive, and he promptly picks up the phone to book the same wedding venue where he and Jenni’s dearly departed mother got married. Now hold that thought for a minute.

Margot (Witherspoon) is an unapologetically never-been-married/never-a-mom career woman, a high-powered producer of reality-TV crapola like Is it Dead?, where contestants try to guess if inert animals are kaputskies or just sleeping and ready to claw their faces off. She absolutely adores her younger sister Neve (Meredith Hagner). How much? She makes Peyton Manning-as-himself wait around for their meeting when Neve surprise-drops by Margot’s office to announce her engagement to Dixon (Jimmy Tatro). And Peyton Manning-as-himself stands by awkwardly with a flat expression as an over-the-moon Margot declares herself the wedding planner. Her qualifications? “I planned 17 seasons of Altar Wars!”, she chirps.

Thing is, a clerical error – having to do with a dead pen and an even-more-dead old lady – finds the weddings double-booked at the same small venue on a small island. Is this town big enough for the both of ’em? Dunno. There’s some pushing and shoving and territorial urinations between Jim and Margot, but eventually they reach an agreeable compromise, because they’re not totally selfish cads. Well, not all the time, anyway. For the rest of the movie, the two parties come together, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, and go apart, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. There’s lots of confused emotions fueling the by-turns mutual goodwill and animosity: Jim worries that Jenni’s new life will leave him in the dust, lonely and weepy. And Margot wrestles with her status as the black sheep individualist in a collectivist family, led by her mother Flora (Celia Weston), who strikes us as a judgy Deep South snob, although she might not necessarily be that. Rehearsal dinners collide head-on, tipsy toasts are given, wedding parties fall into alligator-patrolled waters, feelings are hurt and Margot and Jim vacillate wildly between empathizing with each other’s predicament and wanting to rip each other’s head off. Two fiercely loyal wedding-protectors enter, but will only one leave? NO SPOILERS, AMIGO.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Wanna feel old? Ferrell is now Father of the Bride just like Steve Martin and Spencer Tracy. And Witherspoon, forever senior-class president Tracy Flick in our hearts, is the middle-ager in movies where she used to be wearing the gown and veil (see Sweet Home Alabama, a clear predecessor to her Cordially Invited character). This is very much a Gen-X flick, and it doesn’t come close to inspiring the big laughs like recent Zillennial dest-wedd rom-com Anyone but You did. 

Performance Worth Watching: Ever the consummate professional, Witherspoon confidently carries the movie with her ability to go macro with the comedy and micro with her character’s inner life (not that Margot is a particularly deep character on the page). She also seems to have persuaded Stoller not to splatter her with cake or push her into the mud, which has us wondering if there was a non-embarrassment clause in her contract. If so, good for her.

Memorable Dialogue: Then again, Witherspoon is asked to shout the line, “WE’RE GOIN’ CHAOS MONKEY!”

I also laughed at the classic Ferrell delivery of this one: “You said my daughter’s hair makes her look like a road whore! A road whore! Not even a regular whore!”

Sex and Skin: Zilch.

Our Take: You’re Cordially Invited is almost funny enough, and heartwarming enough. Almost. Not quite. Near miss. Just a bit outside. Stoller frequently loses interest in fleshing out Jim and Margot, and fills that space with oodles and gobs of wacky supporting characters and miscellaneous clamor ranging from celeb cameos and culture-clash bits to wild-animal rigamarole and a creepy father-daughter duet of “Islands in the Stream.” Some of it works, a little more of it doesn’t, and one bit implies that you’re too stupid to suss out the incestuous undertones of Jim and Jenni singing the Dolly Parton-Kenny Rogers makin’-love-to-each-other hit, so Stoller has his characters flatly point out the incestuous undertones of Jim and Jenni singing the Dolly Parton-Kenny Rogers makin’-love-to-each-other hit. Got that? The song is about SEX, you imbeciles! (And please pronounce that like Bugs Bunny does: im-BESS-ills.)

Wanna feel old again? The 40-Year-Old Virgin is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. That film established the winning Apatow formula, which neatly balanced crass comedy with endearingly mucilaginous character sentiments and made films like Bridesmaids, Superbad and Knocked Up big crossover hits. Stoller’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall fit neatly into that tonal aesthetic, but You’re Cordially Invited is a shade or two too zany for its own good. That might be acceptable if its comedy was more sharply honed, and less dependent on the wearisome tropes of the genre – there are too many misses among the many misunderstandings, miscommunications and mishaps here. Jim and Margot are given a few opportunities to reckon with their occasional forays into selfish, juvenile behavior and become legit human beings, but they find themselves swept into the tornado of anarchic tumult that Stoller insists is funnier than it is. Anyone expecting this assemblage of talent to yield inspired farce will be disappointed.

Our Call: You’re Cordially Invited might be acceptably diverting for some, but I found it too long, too pointlessly chaotic and ultimately too blah to recommend. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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