How to Not Alienate the Ladies

The concept of Wedding Crashers is both inherently funny, and inherently problematic. Its perfect tag line, "Hide your bridesmaids", says it all-- this is going to be a film about men who crash weddings to pick up chicks. The simplicity, and implied laughs, of the situation are brilliant. The problem? Romantic comedies tend to target women. The very women seemingly being duped by the leads.

But Wedding Crashers skirts the problem in two simple ways.

First, the opening wedding montage goes out of its way to show the crashers as guys who love weddings. They have a great time-- it's not just picking up girls, it's also the singing, the dancing, the community. The weddings themselves are part of the event-- the guys just also happen to take home beautiful and willing women afterwards. Even if you think what the guys are doing is dodgy, you can't help get into the spirit of the thing. No men on screen have ever loved weddings more.

Second, of course, the story truly begins when fate throws a curveball at the leads. They both, in different ways, are hoisted by their own wedding-crashing petards (one by really falling for a bridesmaid, the other by getting stalked by one). You can't hate the characters when the film itself punishes them more than it celebrates them.

It's the Lolita rule of storytelling: your characters can do whatever you want, as long as you remove the audience's need to judge them. Let the story judge them. Let the audience sit back and enjoy the ride.