Hey, everyone! It’s Story Sunday again! Like I mentioned last Sunday, this has been a weird month. It’s flying by. Anyway, this weekend I’m away for a wedding. A wedding where I’m the best man, so this has been a pretty awesome and exciting process. Since I’m writing these posts at weird times and in weird places, I’ve decided to make them somewhat themed when I can and fun! Last weekend was the bachelor party and I wrote about The Hangover. So this week is the wedding and I’m going to talk about another one of my favorite comedies, Wedding Crashers.

Wedding Crashers has all the makings of a classic romantic comedy, making it a great date movie and whatnot. However, the movie also reached across the aisle to large male audiences because of the male humor between Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson’s characters. If you’ll note the connection between last week and this week, Bradley Cooper plays the antagonist in Wedding Crashers. After this movie, I wasn’t sure he would find work again. He played the part well, but I thought he might get stuck in the role of the unlikable asshole for the rest of his life. It worked out, though, and now he’s a big success, which is great.

This movie, like The Hangover, had a unique premise when it arrived in 2005. These were party guys, party guys who were getting older. That premise by itself isn’t very unique or powerful, but the fact that they always attend parties where they don’t belong, weddings to be specific, is a unique and funny premise. Again, like The Hangover, we have a movie that does tension very well. Sure, there’s the emotional tension that comes with every romantic comedy, the issue of wanting to be with someone that you can’t have initially, but that you’ll probably end up with. This comedy adds another layer, the threat of getting caught. In addition to being a source of tension, it’s also a source of humor. How do they manage to avoid getting caught. It starts as a fun form of tension.

The tension of getting caught, however, builds as they get closer and closer to the main female characters, played by Rachel McAdams and Isla Fisher. The stakes get higher, they male characters want to form relationships but they’ve started to do so under false identities. The truth is in direct opposition with desire and it makes for great tension in the movie.

This movie works, the tension works, the romantic elements work, and it enjoyed a lot of success about that. For a while, there was talk of a sequel and I’m glad that it never happened. This movie hit so many different audiences with a great mix of varied humor, different perspectives, a unique premise, and fantastic tension that added to the humor instead of taking away from it.

Now it’s your turn! What other comedies have great tension or a unique premise? If you’ve seen this movie, what was your favorite moment or scene?