‘You're Cordially Invited' Review: Comedy Pros Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell Vow to Ruin One Another's Weddings

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29-01-2025

It's a sign of the times that a good, old-fashioned date movie featuring two of the most bankable movie stars of the early aughts, Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell, is bypassing theaters altogether in early 2025. When it comes to writer-director Nicholas Stoller's latest rom-com — if that's the word for a film where two adults set out to sabotage one another's wedding plans — you're cordially invited to watch 'You're Cordially Invited' at home. The Prime release should play great at any scale while its stars are crossed at one another, but miscalculates their chemistry in a gratuitous and slightly icky epilogue.
As Jim, Ferrell is the first to be introduced, fussing over his Gen Z daughter Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan), who disturbs the balance with her widower dad when she announces she's engaged to Stony Blyden's one-dimensional Oliver (the grooms-to-be can't be too memorable, or they'd pull focus from the adults). Ever since Jenni's mom died, Jim has pinned all his happiness on her feelings, and when it comes time for his only girl to get married, he wants everything to be perfect — so he calls the Palmetto House, the island resort where he and his late wife tied the knot, and books the venue.
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For her part, Witherspoon is back in 'Sweet Home Alabama' mode, assuming that character had never gotten hitched in the first place: She plays Margot, a high-strung Los Angeles TV producer who's cut off nearly all contact with her judgmental Georgia family, apart from her younger sister, Nev (Meredith Hagner), who's madly in love with a devoted but dense Chippendales dancer (Jimmy Tatro). Nev's situation, plus the news that she's pregnant, brings out Margot's protective instinct, and she immediately switches into wedding planning mode, promising her sister the perfect ceremony.
There's just one problem: The idyllic island resort where both Jim and Margot made reservations accidentally double-booked, and the place isn't big enough for both parties. The control-freak organizers could go nuclear on the poor Leslie (Jack McBrayer), the exasperated Palmetto House manager, or insist that they have the venue all to themselves. Instead, they tentatively agree to share the space … which is a recipe for conflict with two such control freaks involved.
On Margot's side, there's the rest of her family to worry about, as her hyper-critical mother (Celia Weston) can't let anything go without complaining, even though everyone but Margot thinks she's a sweetheart. Her siblings bother her even more, whether it's caveman Colton (Rory Scovel), who refers to his wife as 'the wife,' or heavy-drinking and highly inappropriate Gwyneth (scene-stealer Leanne Morgan), who turns laconic one-liners — like 'I got a spray tan, if you're wondering what that smell is' or 'If I wasn't married, I'd climb him like a redwood' — into quotable insta-classics.
A Tennessee stand-up with a hilariously husky drawl, Morgan might as well be this movie's answer to Melissa McCarthy. Though nothing can touch the 'Bridesmaids' breakout's hall-of-fame performance, Stoller follows director Paul Feig's lead in recognizing that a wedding comedy's only as entertaining as its guests. Meeting Margot's clan, it's easy to understand why she sought refuge as far away as possible, and yet, Jim instantly gets along with her family, which only makes matters worse.
Meanwhile, there's something suspicious about Jim and Jenni's codependent dynamic — the way he does his daughter's hair and insists on baking the wedding cake himself — that could be coded as there being skeletons (or more) in his closet. In lieu of giving a speech, he invites Jenni up to do a duet, but their song, 'Islands in the Stream,' is wildly inappropriate for a parent to be singing to his child. Its lyrics were clearly intended from one lover to another, ah-ha.
Whether they're playing naughty or nice, Witherspoon and Ferrell are two of the rare stars who can be charming even when trying to sabotage someone else's most important moment, and 'You're Cordially Invited' is most fun when they're on the warpath. The trailer has tipped most of the big gags, from the disaster at the dock to Jim wrestling an alligator, but Stoller's script is strong enough that the movie's pleasures are far from spoiled. Jenni's generation is an easy target — like her hyper-sensitive bestie Heather (Keyla Monterroso Mejia), who's to blame for not confirming the reservation — though the film strikes just the right tone in tripping their triggers.
Stoller, who wrote 'The Five-Year Engagement' and directed 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall,' is notable among contemporary comic filmmakers in that he always keeps his characters grounded. And yet, not even he can solve the problem of where this story's headed: Late in the film, once the festivities have played out and Jim and Margot have gone their separate ways, Stoller introduces the idea that Witherspoon's character doesn't want to spend the rest of her days alone. Unfortuantely, there's not so much as a spark between her and Jim.
Witherspoon presents Margot's not as some unhappy spinster, but as a modern self-reliant woman. If anyone other than Ferrell had played Jenni's teddy-bear father, the movie wouldn't be half as funny, but he's an actor whose emotionally stunted shtick has never lent itself to romance. The mere thought of Jim being a sexual entity revolts his daughter, and unless the cues weren't meant to suggest as much, it's been a running joke for much of the film that he could be gay — or else what is the unspoken 'secret' that everyone's speculating about?
But that dimension doesn't impact the film until the final stretch, by which point, 'You're Cordially Invited' has been so much fun, wherever it's headed 'ever after' hardly matters. The film pulls in cameos from Peyton Manning (boy, does he look uncomfortable doing comedy) and Nick Jonas (funny enough you wish the part were bigger). To tie up the ending nobody asked for, Stoller orchestrates one of those tricks, à la 'Anyone but You,' where the whole cast sings the same song over the course of the shoot — which is to say, they rely on each other, ah-ha.
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