Before I was able to watch this steaming pile of a movie at the official prerelease screening, I had to sit through a skit. Skits make me nervous, as does choking down a jazz cigarette before being thrown into a packed movie theater (I was trying to even the playing field because the movie’s tagline—He’s the best man… money can buy—led me to believe I might have a hard time laughing).
The skit was: “We’re going to have a spontaneous WEDDING right here in the theater! DOES ANYONE in the audience want to get MARRIED???” The improv couple certainly did (the “groom” announced he’d learned about the free wedding offer “on the Tweeter,” HA-HA-HA). Then people ran up and said unintelligible words, a flashing wedding ring was presented, and someone said, “If you thought this wedding was awkward, wait ’til you see The Wedding Ringer!”
And then we literally waited to see The Wedding Ringer. A computer desktop with folders appeared on the big screen. People guffawed. I couldn’t tell if it was a joke because there wasn’t a folder labeled “TIT PICS” or anything. A woman came out and apologized for the delays. I 70 percent thought it was still part of the skit until she came back and announced that it would be about 10 more minutes and we should go get some snacks.
Here’s what we waited for:
Josh Gad plays a sweaty groom-to-be doofus (chubby? Glasses? What a stupid dweeb!) named Doug who looks like Seth Rogen rolled in Jonah Hill mixed with Pat and then sprinkled with Ira Glass. Doug is engaged to Gretchen (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting), who is “way out of his league” in a tan-neck/sperm-shaped-eyebrows kind of way. She’s a woman, so weddings are suuueeewwuuper important to her. Knowing this, Doug obviously can’t be honest with her about the fact that he has no friends, and therefore has no groomsmen or a best man. So he digs himself into a giant sweaty lie hole by making up a list of dude bros who will “definitely be there” to participate in the big day, including the fictional Bic Mitchum, his best friend who is a priest and also in the military (lying is so hard on the spot!). He’s fucked. He’s sweaty. What is he going to do?
Kevin Hart plays the Axe-body-spray-ishly handsome Jimmy—if you pay him enough, he’ll pretend to be your charming BFF at your wedding, give a cool speech about you, and then boink the hottest bridesmaid “before she passes out.” There are different levels of involvement Jimmy can be hired to fake, but Doug is so especially pathetic he’s going to need something that has never been successfully pulled off: the Golden Tuxedo—a $50,000 lie so extreme it includes a set of groomsmen and a best man who will do all the wedding stuff with you before the big day, as long as you remember the rule: He’s not your real friend.
The rest of the movie goes like this:
That Black Eyed Peas song from 2009, fat joke, Gretchen’s macho father asking, “Does anyone else feel super fucking gay?” while waiting to meet the wedding planner, who, right on cue, comes out and is “super fucking gay” (not that gay, though, his flamboyance and lisping are later revealed to be a ploy to earn more money). What else? A ragtag crew of groomsmen (hey it’s Hurley from Lost!), increasingly elaborate lies no adult human would ever believe, gay panic, that tan fucking neck, fat joke, prison-rape joke, pedophilia joke, MULLET HA-HA-HA, wheelchair jokes, bridezilla freak-out, bachelor party rave that ends in a dead dog and dick stitches (aka the point where I almost walked out but remembered they had my cell phone because gawd forbid I throw a sick bootleg on YouTube 10 hours before the public gains access), grandmother accidentally set on fire, Jimmy and Doug’s budding bromance flowering into real brove (but not the gay kind, ew/duh), bridesmaids made out of collagen, gay joke, gay joke, weddings-are-for-women-and-their-mothers, man speeches for men, and the ending (SPOOOIIIIILER): After a smarm-o-tron truth speech during what was supposed to be the toast, the dudes escape the wedding to “really start living,” because faux bros before slow hoes, amiright?! Zero laughing.* The end. 
* Okay, I laughed exactly one time (during a scene where Doug sings in an unexpected helium falsetto for three seconds), but I have to be honest: Most of the theater thought this movie was fucking HILARIOUS, especially the woman who sat next to me. She L-O-V-E-D loved this movie. She squealed “OOH!” every time anything happened; she couldn’t even believe how funny it would be if a heterosexual dude accidentally did something gay like get married to a woman.
