Certificate: 15

Running Time: 109 mins

UK Distributor: Prime Video

UK Release Date: 30 January 2025

WHO’S IN YOU’RE CORDIALLY INVITED?

Will Ferrell, Reese Witherspoon, Geraldine Viswanathan, Meredith Hagner, Celia Weston, Keyla Monterroso Mejia, Leanne Morgan, Jimmy Tatro, Jack McBrayer, Lauren Holt, Stony Blyden

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Nicholas Stoller (director, writer, producer), Jessica Elbaum, Will Ferrell, Lauren Neustadter, Conor Welch and Reese Witherspoon (producers), Michael Andrews (composer), John Guleserian (cinematographer), Daniel Gabbe and Hugh Ross (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A pair of competing wedding parties must share their double-booked venue…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON YOU’RE CORDIALLY INVITED?

2025 is off to an exceptionally cringy start. The destructive California wildfires; Elon Musk doing a Nazi salute; everything going on between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni; all of it, and unfortunately more, in only the first month of the year (God help us for what will happen in the remaining eleven). So, it probably feels appropriate that this January is ending with the release of You’re Cordially Invited, an exceptionally cringy comedy that offers more first-degree embarrassment than actual laughs.

It’s a sad thought, seeing how so many genuinely talented comedic performers and filmmakers are involved in this movie. Beyond its leads Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, both of whom have proven themselves to be extremely funny under the right circumstances, its director and writer Nicholas Stoller is a well-regarded comedic writer-director, having made hits like The Five-Year Engagement, Bros and the underrated animated romp Storks. Yet, none of them are able to salvage a concept ripped straight out of the prototypical sitcom playbook, nor are they able to make it funny enough to overcome its unbearable, and sometimes plainly cruel, levels of cringe.

The film begins with single dad Jim (Ferrell) discovering that his only daughter Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan) has gotten engaged to her clueless boyfriend Oliver (Stony Blyden), quickly arranging for their wedding to take place at the same idyllic location where he once got married. Elsewhere, reality TV network executive Margot (Witherspoon) offers to plan the wedding of her sister Neve (Meredith Hagner) with their highly conservative family present, booking the exact same location and date. Both parties, of course, are shocked and incised to find that the location has double-booked, and despite initially attempting to fit both weddings under the same slot, Jim and Margot eventually devolve into full-on sabotage mode as their fears and insecurities come bubbling up to the surface.

Stoller’s film appears to market itself as a shenanigans comedy where all sorts of crazy mishaps unfold, whether it’s the sinking of an entire dock or somehow bringing an alligator into a bridal suite. The problem is, though, that none of it is very funny. In fact, a lot of the comedic set-pieces rely on pettiness and one-upmanship that borders on being just plain mean-spirited, which negates the comedic aspect and just makes the viewer feel more and more uncomfortable as they’re watching these two central egos try to out-do one another, even if it’s at the expense of the actual bride and groom’s happiness. You never feel as though you’re about to burst out laughing in this film, but rather like you’re on the edge of yelling out of frustration that they cannot put aside their indifferences and at the very least communicate with each other about any grievances or rivalries they might have.

Similar to Stoller’s Bad Neighbours movies (a series which I am not the biggest fan of, for reasons that are honestly rather similar to the ones I have against this film), You’re Cordially Invited carries an obnoxious tone where you can tell a lot of the scenes were heavily improvised and quickly go off the rails with their line-o-rama approach to dropping endless jokey banter. Many of the supporting characters are thinly-veiled cartoons, from the disapproving Southern belle mother to a horde of Gen-Z bridesmaids that throw about the word “gaslighting” like it’s a common verb, while a lot of the actors – many of them perfectly talented comedic performers – are instructed to yell or sometimes scream their lines for humorous effect, only it wears out very quickly when at least one person does that multiple scenes in a row. Occasionally, that approach is used for the punchline to a decent joke, but it’s a rare occurrence in an otherwise headache-inducing sea of shouting matches that leaves you more annoyed than amused.

Then, just when you think the movie hasn’t entirely tested the audience’s patience, the film makes a rather sudden shift in its final act from being this loud and obnoxious wedding-themed shenanigans comedy to a saccharine rom-com between two people who, up to that point, had expressed nothing but contempt for one another in their cruel pursuit of destructive sabotage. It makes even less sense when you factor in how neither of the actors nor their characters have any romantic chemistry whatsoever, leaving their eventual union to not only come out of nowhere, but in ways that feel unnaturally forced. Up to a point, even Stoller seems to be aware of how ridiculous this is, but even he should have recognised that this sudden plot is the result of producers insisting these characters end up together despite the blatant acrimony between them, simply because they are of opposite sexes and thus, by Hollywood rules, they simply must end up together.

It’s a strangely archaic way of wrapping up what is an otherwise irritating comedy where many of the laughs have been replaced by full-on cringe. There are moments that offer a slight chuckle, but that’s largely because these are comedically talented people working on the film – which, in a way, makes You’re Cordially Invited more frustrating to watch, since all this talent is being put to largely ineffective use, in a film that mistakes cruelty for hijinks, acrimony for romantic flirtation, and cringe-worthy situations for an endless source of comedy.

SO, TO SUM UP…

You’re Cordially Invited wastes a comedically talented cast and crew in a cringe-inducing wedding comedy that relies on relentless cruelty and obnoxious screaming matches for a large sum of its jokes, before making a baffling later decision to force the two protagonists together despite their blatant incompatibility.

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