The five second pitch to The Wedding Ringer is eerily like another black-guy-teaches-fat-white-guy-to-be-cool. I’m talking of course of Tracy Morgan’s Totally Awesome. And yes, fine, the wide released, box office champion Hitch as well. The final products couldn’t look any different though. The mandatory bromance angle may be as far fetched as Kevin James and Will Smith BFFing, or James and Sandler shackin’ up for that matter – and there are two too many wincingly cheesy portions that highlight said narrative cheapness –  but on the whole, Jeremy Garelick‘s film is all about the laughs, and features a good many of them. At times, a surprising amount.

In The Wedding Ringer, Kevin Hart owns and operates an underground Best Man Rental agency. Just as one might rent a tux or a town car, Hart’s Jimmy Callahan rents out his easy charm and A+ best man speeches to guys with an unfortunate amount of friends (read none). With his wedding just ten days away, young money-bagger Doug Harris (Josh Gadd) seeks out the help of seasoned pro Jimmy to pull of the illusive “Golden Tux”, in which he must employ and train a slew of groomsmen as well as attend various family events, all while trying to fit into his terribly off-colored assigned role of “military priest.”

The Wedding Ringer may not find its groove early – and its first scene is absolutely horrendous – but when it does, there are a string of embarrassingly rich potty-level-laughs. Kevin Hart moves a mile a minute, spinning his face into a number of comical screw-ups – adapting 1990s Jim Carrey’s rubber-faced, visage contortionism – and spouting off glib one-liners as quickly as he can think of them. While the script from Garelick, Will Packer and Jay Lavender revisits old territory, the film shines when Hart ad-libs his way to preposterous comic heights.

The raunch can be found ratcheted up to tasteless levels and those with a distaste for the underbelly of humor will certainly find themselves fully disgusted. With scenes that involve dogs biting peanut butter-smothered nether regions, displays of oddly number testicles, a mulleted adult berating a child before throwing a beer can at him and other nut shots of a similar breed, The Wedding Ringer is no display of fine-tuned highbrow comedy. But for how low some of the blows can stoop, the train of beefy laughs still steams forth.

Striking at the potent middle ground where sentiment and humor meet, The Wedding Ringer caps off with an emotionally-rending third act that, although predictable, features some of Hart’s most genuine moments on screen to date. And though Josh Gad has trouble keeping up with the Tasmanian whirlwind that is Hart, he gets him moments in, infrequent as they are. The product is a dumb, paint-by-numbers comedy that’ll surprise you with its amount of laughs. And though it’s a hard one to recommend without a big asterisk, I found myself occasionally rapt with its overtly immature humor. Oh and to whomever decided to end the entire film on an out-of-nowhere Lost joke, I applaud you.

C

Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter