Writer/director Nicholas Stoller has often embraced the chaos of romance in relationship-centric comedy like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Five-Year Engagement, and Bros. His newest trek in this terrain is You're Cordially Invited. This motion picture begins with dedicated clingy single dad Jim (Will Ferrell) learning that his college graduate daughter Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan) is getting married. A plan eventually forms for Jenni to get hitched on the island where Jim and his late wife got married decades ago. An eventual snafu involving a newly deceased woman and a pen running out of ink leaves Jim in a pickle one year later.
The island (which only has enough room for one wedding party) has been double-booked. Margot (Reese Witherspoon) has reserved the place for her sister Neve's (Meredith Hagner) wedding. Though Margot gets first dibs on the property, she eventually agrees to split the territory with Jim. However, conflict arises once these two weddings actually have to occur simultaneously. It doesn’t help that both Jim and Margot have personal baggage that’s flaring up during this event. Jim puts too much of his own personal happiness on his daughter, you see, while Margot is innately hostile to her immediate family.
You’re Cordially Invited's first half surprised me with some little amusing details. Chiefly, Stoller has wisely cast Ferrell and Witherspoon in characters slightly askew of their pop culture personas. Rather than playing an aggressive Ron Burgundy or Ricky Bobby pastiche, Ferrell is in cheerful naivete mode as Jim. Meanwhile, it’s a hoot seeing Witherspoon tackling a boozy reality TV producer that couldn’t remember the names of her sibling’s kids if her life depended on it. Margot is a more hostile figure than Elle Woods and Witherspoon clearly relishes playing this character.
For a little while, Stoller just has fun bouncing off two wildly different wedding parties from one another. That produces some amusing gags like Jim inexplicably remembering the names of every one of Margot’s relatives or Margot’s obsession with “sunset time”. The best of these jokes is an elaborate performance between Jim and Jenni crooning the Kenny Loggins and Dolly Parton tune “Islands in the Stream” together. It’s very reminiscent of the “Afternoon Delight” gag from Arrested Development, no question. However, Ferrell and Viswanathan’s dedication to belting out the ditty with a father/daughter rapport without a hint of self-awareness did leave me cackling.
Unfortunately, there’s one You’re Cordially Invited scene marking a drastic shift that the movie never recovers from. This sequence begins with Margot, frustrated over her sister’s wedding facing endless hurdles, putting golf balls into a nearby lake. Jim walks up to her and the pair begin to talk about the issues. Recently, N+1 did an excellent piece on the problems with Netflix original programming. This included a section where screenwriters alleged that Netflix mandated that characters must speak aloud their motivations and actions at all times to keep distracted viewers in the loop. If you’re on your phone or doing your laundry, you’ll still know what’s happening in Murder Mystery.
Amazon must’ve told Stoller to do something similar with You’re Cordially Invited. How else to explain the atrocious expository dialogue anchoring this Margot/Jim sequence? Margot’s lengthy soliloquy about her familial dysfunction is especially terrible since it all seems to come out as just a single interminable run-on sentence. Jim’s verbiage is no better as he just flatly recites his very obvious discomfort with Jenni leaving the nest. Up to this point, You’re Cordially Invited's struck an amiable air committing to gags and mayhem. Now, Stoller has entered a didactic sentimental mode that suffocates every inch of the remaining runtime.
It’s not just that this dialogue's tin-eared. It also means You’re Cordially Invited gradually eschews laughs. Even Margot’s arch uber-Southern siblings suddenly take on tragic backstories after previously just being punchlines. Imagine if Stoller’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall had detoured into a third act where Paul Rudd’s super-stoned surfer instruction was inexplicably monologuing about his unfulfilled dreams of being a clarinet player in Baltimore. That’s what happens to You’re Cordially Invited.
Frustratingly, Stoller also sands off the edges of Margot in the third act, leaving Witherspoon without much of a character to play. The previous fun of seeing Margot threatening to bodily harm Jim vanishes. It's instead replaced with the rudimentary sight of Margot going through a predictable character arc involving how she’s alienated her family members. You’re Cordially Invited’s only big laughs in its home stretch come from some of Ferrell’s line deliveries. Oh, and it's also a hoot seeing committed puppetry realize a very hostile alligator. I like to imagine Stoller called in the puppeteers from Sarah Marshall’s puppet Dracula musical number for this gig, a little “getting the band back together” moment.
It's a shame to see a rom-com with promise devolve into proceedings that are way too mushy for their own good. Then again, You’re Cordially Invited joins a pantheon of comedies from the last decade seemingly self-conscious of existing as “just a comedy” or “just a rom-com.” These films sweatily establish Chekov’s Guns and rigidly contort the plot to center around very formulaic character arcs. All the while, memorable gags, lavish locales, engrossing sensuality, and all the classic qualities of rom-coms vanish. In trying to prove you're making a "real movie", these modern comedies forget to bring the laughs or romance.
Something like When Harry Met Sally... lets relaxed dialogue and actors with good chemistry take the wheel to drive an entire movie. Screenwriter Nora Ephron clearly loved this genre and the film's characters. Stoller’s work on You’re Cordially Invited initially thrives on its own endearing qualities to carry the day. Unfortunately, it too succumbs to the same narrative problems (not to mention an annoying focus on the bourgeoise) that keep plaguing 2020s comedies. More chaotic gag-driven yukfests like Bottoms, please, and fewer comedies only wrapped up in very basic tenets of narrative-driven storytelling.
Thankfully, You’re Cordially Invited's far from the nadir of this modern phenomenon. Any movie where Will Ferrell mournfully recalls “the saddest threeway of all-time” with two other widows can’t be all bad. Ditto a film where Witherspoon often looks like she’s two seconds away from jabbing a shard of glass in people’s throats. Unfortunately, those chaotic qualities are the exception rather than the norm in Invited’s runtime. The most magical moments at weddings are often unplanned surprises. What a shame, then, that You’re Cordially Invited’s so committed to inflexible storytelling impulses and lame ham-fisted dialogue.