You’re Cordially Invited

The minimum requirement of any comedy: It should make you laugh. All the usual critical considerations of form, content, and performance come secondary. If the movie accomplishes this basic expectation, a comedy will have fulfilled its primary purpose. Some comedies endure beyond a single viewing because their laughs are timeless. Others rely on shock-based humor and have little rewatchability as a result. I think back to Meet the Parents (2000), a high-anxiety yarn where Ben Stiller must impress his fiancée’s family, particularly his future father-in-law, Robert De Niro. It made me laugh plenty, even though most of its humor was rooted in over-the-top situations that, once seen, don’t play with the same energy on a second watch. Despite never wanting to revisit Meet the Parents for this reason, I remember it fondly enough, and that’s how it should remain. Regardless, the extent to which I can watch a comedy a second time and laugh just as hard factors into my assessment. 

With You’re Cordially Invited, writer-director Nicholas Stoller’s wedding comedy about two parties booked for the same exclusive venue on the same day, I thought about what makes a worthwhile comedy while writing this review. Much like Meet the Parents, an obvious inspiration here, its humor is rooted in awkward family dynamics, outrageous behavior, and wedding-day debacles. The likable cast—headed by Will Ferrell, Reese Witherspoon, Geraldine Viswanathan, and Meredith Hagner—creates a lot of goodwill toward the material. It’s a pleasant, high-energy movie that made me smile for much of its 109-minute runtime. But I must admit, my laughter was infrequent. And somewhere in the second act, it started to feel dragged out and absurd beyond the point I could enjoy the experience. 

Ferrell plays Jim, a widower who has filled the absence in his life by focusing on his daughter, Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan). An early montage showcasing Jim’s role as a homemaker and supportive father—he bakes, cleans, and later does Jenni’s hair—needlessly pokes fun at his stereotypically unmasculine domesticity. When Jenni announces that she’s getting married to her year-long boyfriend Oliver (Stony Blyden), Jim immediately books the Palmetto Inn, a private island spot in Georgia known for its weddings. Due to a snafu, the exact date has also been booked by Margot (Reese Witherspoon), a big-shot television producer from Hollywood who vows to oversee the wedding of her younger sister Neve (Meredith Hagner) and her Chippendale dancer fiancé Dixon (Jimmy Tatro). The Palmetto’s taxed manager (Jack McBrayer) must organize two weddings, though there’s no mention of where twice as many attendees would stay.  

Stoller, no stranger to wedding comedies after The Five-Year Engagement (2012), ensures all manner of broad disasters occur. The coinciding weekend events feature drunken speeches, damaged brides, disastrous rainfall, a secret pregnancy, a plunge into water, no end of family conflict, and an awkward father-daughter performance of “Islands in the Stream” by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. Throughout, viewers will gasp and audibly groan, “Oh no.” It’s that kind of movie. Margot’s business-bro brother (Rory Scovel) and horny older sister (Leanne Morgan) bring some laughs, so do the movie’s jokes at the expense of Gen Z. When things start going wrong, Jim and Margot suspect each other of trying to sabotage their respective wedding, escalating the weekend’s tension. Inevitably, their bad behavior leads to emotional blowouts and comic shocks, followed by reconciliation. Among the most tender is the restoration of the relationship between Margot and her passive-aggressive mother (Celia Weston) after a little open communication.

In the last third, You’re Cordially Invited sets up Ferrell and Witherspoon as a romantic pair. Maybe it’s Ferrell’s default mode of irony and satire—the sense that whatever he’s doing, it’s part of a bit—but he has never registered as a particularly sexual being in his comedies. Don’t expect sparks to fly in his mismatched pairing with Witherspoon, who often appears opposite six-foot-plus men for a comic juxtaposition. While their dynamic as enemies is playful and spirited, their lack of chemistry as a couple takes the movie into a weird place. However, pretty much everything after a random alligator arrives on the scene feels forced and unnatural. In a desperate moment, Jim brings the alligator into the Palmetto for reasons that aren’t exactly clear to me. It’s a comic prop that feels pulled from Carrot Top’s trunk and is just as unfunny. But the filmmakers had so much faith in its hilarity they put the reptile on the poster. 

Stoller has consistently made hilarious, successful movies for theatrical exhibition over the years, from Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) to The Muppets (2011) to Bros (2022). Shot in that bright, nondescript style of most major comedies, You’re Cordially Invited is another R-rated comedy relegated to streaming (on Amazon Prime Video) instead of getting a theatrical release. Though, communal laughter is exactly what this experience needs. Even so, it’s too silly for its themes about healthy boundaries, honest communication, and the importance of family time to land with much impact. And it so often attempts to create genuine feeling that the silliness of its humor can feel incongruous; it might have played better as either less goofy or more goofy. At home, it might pleasantly divert your attention from the world for two hours, but it has little staying power afterward and isn’t likely to earn a place among the most memorable comedies of 2025.