A few weeks back, Zac Efron and Aubrey Plaza co-starred in Dirty Grandpa, a movie so awesome, its distributor decided not to even let us see it in advance, because they didn’t want to ruin it for us. But the critics who sought it out weren’t exactly taken by it, and audiences have been pretty indifferent as well, so it seems strange there’s already another Efron/Plaza movie on deck.
In Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, Efron and Workaholics’ Adam Devine play a pair of ne’er-do-well bros – literally, they’re brothers – whose parents issue stern instructions that they have to bring dates to their sister’s Hawaiian wedding. Plaza and Devine’s Pitch Perfect co-star Anna Kendrick play said dates, “bad girls” who clean up and play nice for the free trip to Hawaii, only to let their freak flags fly once they land.
Here’s the first trailer:
Looks like some pretty low-hanging fruit, and the Bad Grandpa echoes are unfortunate, but give ‘em this much: Plaza and Kendrick are an inspired pairing, and we’ll see just about anything that gives them the chance to act a fool. And the film marks the feature directorial debut of Jake Szymanski, whose HBO movie 7 Days in Hell was awfully funny stuff.
Mike and Dave is in theaters July 8.