Corddry, chemistry elevate 'Vegas'
Last Updated on 3/20/2010
Published on 5/22/2008
By Meredith Carter
By now, if you read the headline, you may be asking yourself the following (very valid) question: "How can this hare-brained reviewer LIKE 'What Happens in Vegas' when she HATED 'Made of Honor'?" (If you're a red-blooded female, you might add, as a bewildered afterthought, "And 'Made of Honor' had PATRICK DEMPSEY in it!")
Well, ask and ye shall receive my answer. "What Happens in Vegas" has three things "Made of Honor" doesn't have:
1) Rob Corddry.
2) Actors who generate more romantic chemistry than, say, two pieces of wet seaweed slapped together (à la Dempsey and Monaghan in "Made of Honor").
3) Rob Corddry.
Not surprisingly, the dependably hilarious Corddry appears in "What Happens in Vegas" for the same reasons he had cameos in "The Heartbreak Kid" and the "Harold and Kumar" sequel: to ratchet up the comedy with his crack comic timing.
What is surprising, however, is that "What Happens in Vegas" isn't so bad on its own (really!). Though they're certainly not Serious Actors, Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz generate the right amount of playful romantic chemistry to make their attraction plausible.
The movie, which soundly disproves Sin City's recently adopted motto-of-sorts, opens in New York City. Joy McNally (Diaz) is a Type A stock broker who's just been dumped by her fiancée (Jason Sudeikis) ... in front of everyone she invited to his surprise birthday party. Jack Fuller (Kutcher) is a slacker who's just been fired by his boss (Treat Williams) ... who happens to be his father. So Joy and Jack do what anyone in this situation: Grab their best friends (played by Lake Bell and Corddry) and hop a plane to Vegas.
The rest is Sin City history. Boy and girl get rotten, stinking, falling-down drunk, boy buys girl vending machine engagement ring shaped like a pair of dice, boy and girl get hitched in 24-hour Vegas chapel. Enter the twist: Jack uses Joy's quarter in a slot machine and wins $3 million. Since they're married, she demands half. But the judge presiding their case (a delightfully twisted Dennis Miller) sentences them to six months of "hard marriage" before either can touch the money.
If all this plot summary makes "What Happens in Vegas" sound a little gimmicky, that's because, well, it is. The whole movie is based on this gimmick, and -- for better or worse -- every bit of action leads back to the gimmick. Admittedly, some of the gimmick-based gags are juvenile and not particularly funny. (Observe: Jack pees in the sink when Joy won't give up the bathroom. In another scene, he "spikes" her morning smoothie with energy pills.) The real laughs emerge when Bell, as Joy's smart-mouthed pal, and Corddry let loose on each other to cover the sexual tension.
Excluding these few parts, the whole first part the movie, the part where Jack and Joy spend all their time scheming to ruin the marriage in obvious ways, is neither screamingly funny nor very original (didn't "The Break-Up" cover this very same territory?).
But when Joy and Jack start to like each other, somehow "What Happens in Vegas" grows a heart bigger than "The Break-Up" could manage. Sure, the movie loses some of its comic edge, but Kutcher and Diaz have real chemistry. Diaz, in particular, shows more vulnerability than she has in years as someone fresh out of a painful, draining relationship. As for Kutcher, well, he's hardly an acting powerhouse, so he's low-key here and that works because the part doesn't require much range. (And, amazingly, he's learned to make his eyes do more than make him look, like, totally wasted.)
So now, here at the end of this review, I have not changed my mind about "What Happens in Vegas..." It works because the Kutcher-Diaz combo is surprisingly not terrible and sidekick actors Bell and Corddry provide plenty of jokes.
And, for the record, I maintain that I'd take Corddry over Dempsey any day of the week (and twice on Sundays).
Grade: B-
