The first version of the script for The Wedding Ringer, a new comedy about a friendless schlub who rents a best man for his big day, was written back in 2002 — a fact that partly accounts for the whiff of stale leftovers that hangs over the movie from start to finish. Several films have indeed been there, done that — or variations of that — in the 12 years since, including Bridesmaids and The Hangover, which all but redefined the pre-marriage debauchery sub-genre. But a certain derivative, deja-vu quality isn’t the only sin this lazy, numbingly routine, very occasionally amusing comedy commits. An odd-couple bromance spiked with gross-out humor of a mostly unimaginative sort, “The Wedding Ringer,” starring Kevin Hart, largely fails to accomplish its most basic mission: making us laugh. Hart offers a more restrained spin on his usual high-pitched, high-strung persona, but the role is essentially watered-down shtick. Meanwhile, Gad (who played a sex addict in “Thanks for Sharing”) isn’t given much to do except look dim and dejected, the neutered straight man to Hart’s neutered real-life cartoon.
The rather obvious lesson here is that in the age of Judd Apatow and smarter raunch, it takes more than fat dudes, penis jokes and dogs with wandering tongues to make us guffaw in spite of ourselves.
