‘You’re Cordially Invited’: Sorry, unable to attend

As Will Ferrell movies go, the actor’s anodyne comedy “You’re Cordially Invited” ranks somewhere north of “Zoolander 2” and south of “The Other Guys.”

Destined to be forgotten in the wasteland that stretches between the actor’s best work and his worst, this dumb-but-not-dumb-enough, simultaneously heartwarming and disheartening film features layer upon layer of wedding-disaster clichés (complete with a trashed cake). What’s worse, it’s all wrapped inside a forced romantic comedy, like an ill-fitting tuxedo.

Writer-director Nicholas Stoller’s disappointing follow-up to “Bros” has none of the relatable edge of that 2022 film, the first big-studio R-rated gay rom-com, which he co-wrote with star Billy Eichner. This tale of double-booked nuptials set on a quaint coastal island, famous for its dockside vows and sunset views, gets underway as Jim (Ferrell), a widower with an almost obsessive attachment to his daughter Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan), is attempting to book her wedding at the same venue where he and his late wife got married.

Thanks to a far-fetched mistake — the clerk drops dead after she hangs up the phone, but before she can find a pen with ink in it to log Jim’s reservation — a second customer (Reese Witherspoon’s Margot) manages to snag the island for the wedding of her little sister Neve (Meredith Hagner).

Predictable tensions ensue, even after Jim and Margot agree to share the tiny venue once they discover the error.

There’s a sudden rainstorm, an accidental elbow to Jenni’s eye, some overheard trash talk between wedding guests and temperamental differences between the two groups, leading to interparty subterfuge and sabotage. For the record, Jenni’s people are the “fun” ones, with reception entertainment courtesy of bride-and-groom-themed cornhole boards. Neve’s family, on the other hand, are descendants of stuffy Southern gentry. (They all drive identical white Chevy Suburbans.) Celia Weston, as Margot and Neve’s sour-faced, tart-tongued mother, delivers the film’s only standout performance.

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Stoller fails to take advantage of this culture clash, as he does with most every other opportunity for humor. Casting Fortune Feimster, for instance, in the role of the boat captain who ferries guests to the island, the filmmaker then forgets to give the stand-up comedian anything funny to say or do. That’s counting when her character is hired by Jim to deliberately swamp the dock with her boat’s wake during Neve’s vows.

There are moments when “You’re Cordially Invited” feels like it’s on the brink of saying something smart about the excesses of modern destination weddings. But that promise evaporates as quickly as the downpour that drives Jenni’s outdoor rehearsal dinner indoors, where her party has to squeeze in, uncomfortably, among Neve’s guests.

That’s where Jim and Jenni perform a duet of “Islands in the Stream,” a love song that causes everyone, on-screen at least, to cringe at the implied incestuousness of its lyrics. But as directed by Stoller, the creepy performance comes across as barely awkward, let alone delightfully inappropriate. It’s merely lame. One has every right to demand, nay expect, a modicum of bad taste from a Will Ferrell film.

If you’ve seen the film’s poster, you will be waiting for (and you will get) a scene in which Jim wrestles a cheap, animatronic-looking alligator. But even that interlude falls flat.

Many other small details of “Invited” feel less like jokes than gratuitous, unfunny quirks in search of a punch line. Neve is visibly pregnant. Her groom (YouTube personality Jimmy Tatro) is a military medic turned exotic dancer. Margot, a workaholic producer of idiotic reality TV shows, mentions, to no real purpose, that in her youth she had sex with a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Jenni’s maid of honour (Keyla Monterroso Mejia) reads a lengthy passage aloud from Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” during the ceremony.

It all feels vaguely desperate. So does Margot’s singleton status, which seems, as in many a retrograde movie before it, begging for Jim to remedy it.

These days, our country could use some of Ferrell’s medicine, too – something to bring America together in our shared love of laughter.

But “You’re Cordially Invited” turns out to be less comedy cure than sugar pill.