You're Cordially Invited

If you as a filmmaker can't come up with something original or quirky or funny, you can always rip off the story from an existing film. The Amazon Prime Video film You're Cordially Invited, starring a middling Will Ferrell, is a kind of a copy of Wedding Crashers, except that it's neither humorous nor does it feature characters that stand out or entertain.

You're Cordially Invited revolves around a double-booked wedding and the "chaos" that ensues. Ferrell plays the simpering widower Jim who is struck by the shocking news that his 18-year-old daughter is getting married, and immediately books a wedding venue, including a bridal suite, dinner plans, and everything in between. However, problems arise when Jim, his daughter, and their family and friends turn up at the venue and they realise they've accidentally been double booked.

Reese Witherspoon plays career woman and Hollywood producer Margot who, in between her meetings and million-dollar deals, plans her little sister's wedding and books herself into the same venue as Jim for the same weekend. Despite hastily drawn up agreements about who does what, stays where, and uses which parts of the wedding venue, they both start planning how to most effectively sabotage each other's weddings and in the midst of this there is, of course, room for plenty of overused moral red tape to be crossed.

How could you dad? Don't you think of anyone but yourself? Damn it sis, why are you so selfish as to sabotage the most important day of my life? Everything has been done before. Everything is so catastrophically unimaginative and horribly humourless that it struggles to muster even a faint giggle during its run time of one hour and 49 minutes.

Ferrell was once the funniest actor in the world. Between Anchorman, Step Brothers, Talladega Nights, and so forth, his filmography is excellent. Today, however, he is as unbelievably boring as he once was unbelievably funny, and as an long-time Ferrell fan, I can only conclude that he has really done his bit and, like an Eddie Murphy or Chevy Chase, has lost the ability to elicit laughter.

Reese is also not funny, at all, although she works well as the moral anchor, as she did in comedies like Four Christmases and This Means War. Here she's mostly just annoyingly grumpy and her dynamic with Ferrell is non-existent. Skip You're Cordially Invited, avoid it and spend your precious time doing something fun instead, like rewatching Step Brothers.