The Wedding Ringer

Perhaps Kevin Hart deserves credit for trying to diversify his act somewhat with The Wedding Ringer, a low-brow comedy in which the diminutive, motor-mouthed comedian plays the title role.

But it’s difficult to go too overboard with praise for this obnoxious and woefully predictable “bromance” that tries to be both crude and heartfelt, and winds up caught awkwardly in-between.

Speaking of awkward, Doug (Josh Gad) isn’t so much a hopeless romantic as he is just hopeless. He’s less than two weeks away from his wedding to Gretchen (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting), yet he doesn’t have a best man. He finds a solution with Jimmy (Hart), a self-proclaimed relationship expert who runs a service in which he plays the role for a fee.

Such begins a partnership in which they try to keep up the ruse for the bride and her family until the nuptials, while assembling a ragtag collection of groomsmen who only cause more chaos and further threaten the impending marriage.

Hart’s legions of fans might get their money’s worth by watching him fire off some rapid-fire one-liners and cause mayhem, and there are some scattered big laughs along the way with Gad as his straight man. However, the script by rookie director Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender (The Break-Up) keeps dumbing down a premise that could have been moderately clever.

There’s an especially tasteless sequence involving a bachelor party, a beagle, some peanut butter and Doug’s genitalia, and another extended scene of a touch football game with three former NFL superstars feels like it’s from a different movie entirely.

Then comes the half-hearted attempts at poignancy, when Jimmy develops a conscience about his line of work and Doug realizes what a loner he’s always been. But the audience already knew that from the start about both men, and therein lies a major problem. The movie is completely reliant on the stupidity of its characters, who won’t question any of the obvious holes in the scheme until the inevitable reveal.

Of course, such scrutiny is probably more than the film probably craves or deserves. Yet while The Wedding Ringer tries to rely on the mismatched chemistry of its stars, it fails to recognize that it’s not playing to the strength of either actor.

Rated R, 101 minutes.