‘You’re Cordially Invited’ review: A match made in mediocrity

Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon team-up for the occasionally winsome, but ultimately underwhelming You’re Cordially Invited.

With both Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Five-Year Engagement, writer/director Nicholas Stoller has explored love lost and found, and love harbored through years of turmoil. So in that sense, Stoller’s latest, You’re Cordially Invited, can’t help but feel a bit like a lesser retread of his better works. This streaming title boasts some big names (Will Ferrell! Reese Witherspoon!) and relies on their well-worn charms to carry the proceedings with ease. And yet, You’re Cordially Invited lacks a notability that might make it an outlier in Stoller’s strong filmography.

For Jim (Ferrell), his daughter Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan) is his whole world. A long-time widower who has devoted his life to his precious kin, his paternal instincts are tested when Jenni (barely a college graduate) announces that she’s engaged to her long-time sweetie Oliver (Stony Blyden). Knowing that her parents also married young, Jenni wants to honor her father and late mother by getting married at Palmetto Island, a gorgeous island hotel where Jim got married years ago.

Elsewhere Margot (Witherspoon) learns that her younger sister, the bright-faced Neve (Meredith Hagner), is betrothed to Dixon (Jimmy Tatro), a sweet Southern boy with an exotic profession that raises eyebrows. Margot wholeheartedly agrees to take on wedding planning duties and sets a course to reserve a date at the Palmetto. Due to a tragic accident, Neve and Dixon get booked for the same weekend as Jenni and Oliver. Because the island is only big enough to host one party, Jim and Margot try to play nice and split the lovely lakeside locale. But what starts as an amicable(ish) effort soon turns into a wedding tug-of-war when mistakes, misunderstandings, and bad intentions blunder up what should be a well-decorumed weekend. 

I miss the old Will Ferrell.

With some notable exceptions, including his amusing supporting turns in Barbie and last year’s winning documentary Will & Harper, Ferrell’s post-Adam McKay career output remains a continuous series of underwhelming affairs. Middling misfires like the Daddy’s Home movies, Downhill, and Holmes & Watson, reek of mid-career desperation. They lack the deliriously debauched fun of the Anchorman films, Talledega Nights, Old School, or The Other Guys, and it is a shame to say that, despite a few chuckle-worthy sequences, this new effort is no exception. 

The biggest issue here, perhaps, is that You’re Cordially Invited doesn’t settle into a comfortable comedy groove. It bounces between sentimental silliness and foul-mouthed filthiness constantly, and the latter often seems jarringly forced and/or overdone. Sweet moments will intentionally be broken by angry, cuss-filled tirades, and You’re Cordially Invited ultimately relies on this set-up so often that it becomes dull and tiresome. The comedy set pieces, meanwhile, often seem too broad and wacky, lacking the specificity and sharp character details that made Stoller’s previous features pop. The desire to make everything go big and outlandish ultimately diminishes things.

Decent wedding dates.

It should be noted that Witherspoon and Ferrell — two seasoned ‘00s-era pros who haven’t crossed paths professionally until now — know how to play characters who can push other people’ buttons, and that’s certainly the case here. It’s because they can play off each other antagonistically well that the direction of their characters in the third act feels forced and, sadly, false. It doesn’t lend itself to the comedy well and whatever dramatic stakes were intended with them doesn’t ring true either, as it plays more like a script decision rather than an organic action.

So as far as lazy Sunday films go, you could certainly do worse. As I alluded to earlier, there are some genuine laughs found — if not consistently. The supporting cast, which also includes sharp talent like Jack McBrayer, Rory Scovel, and especially Celia Weston, are all good for some light gaffs, which is enough to keep you half-interested throughout. It also helps that, as Ferrell gets older and more grey in the face, it’s becoming easier to accept him as a burgeoning dramatic performer, which makes some light moments between him and the always-delightful Viswanathan hold some warm emotionality (even amid the forced swearing). As far as recent Ferrell productions go, this is far from the worst and not offensive and/or contemptuous like, say, Get Hard or Zoolander 2. But that’s a kind way of waving off what is, sadly, yet another ho-hum starring vehicle for late-period Ferrell.

The bottom line.

You’re Cordially Invited falls in line with what you can expect from Ferrell at this point — a generally mediocre, if not entirely unpleasant, comedy that lacks the sizzle, if not the sincerity, of his earlier, mostly better works. But for fans of Nicholas Stoller, a writer-director who does good work in an inconsistent genre, this Prime title marks a sad low. Not an embarrassment, but a disappointment all the same. While You’re Cordially Invited suggests a return to his roots, it’s diminishing returns for a director who usually invites a lot more laughs than this one produces.

You’re Cordially Invited is streaming on Prime Video starting January 30. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of Prime Video. Read more reviews by Will Ashton here.