It's hard to say much about Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates because it's basically just a number of funny scenes about a quartet of likeable frauds in a predictable story of social romantic intrigue that has nothing in mind but keeping you amused, at which it is very successful. Delicate people may be disturbed by its comic amorality and especially its language, but the whole thing is so silly and unbelievable that it pretty much wins you over.
Zac Efron and Adam Devine are overage adolescents who need to quit treating life as one big sandbox for them to play in, and Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza are the women they are trying to use. But the four are largely the same after all, so we don't get much worked up about their predictable fates. The scenes are devoted to laughs and too short to engage our emotions even if they tried to, even if the story was believable, which nobody pretends it is. Bridesmaids was social realism compared to Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates.
Verbal wit runs pretty consistently, and physical comedy ranges from great facial expressions to a hilarious and impossible Kama Sutra thing with a massage man. Only a peculiar bit about horses seems to be out of place. The casually treated theme has something to do with being honest to yourself and forgiving everybody's trespasses, including your own, but the world portrayed is so lacking in malice that forgiveness and understanding are unrealistically easy; for one, the physical beauty of everything from costumes to settings is entirely appropriate.
If only the world could be like that. But at least it can be for a couple of hours, with Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Even the out-takes are worth waiting a couple more minutes for.
