"Hats off to the writer-director Nicholas Stoller", who has taken an exhausted genre (the wedding comedy) and somehow brought it to "vivid, frequently side-splitting life", said Kevin Maher in The Times.
In "You're Cordially Invited", Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell play the antagonists of a "weekend wedding nightmare" that occurs when two ceremonies are accidentally booked for the same date, on the same alligator-infested island in Georgia. Ferrell plays the overprotective dad of the first bride (Geraldine Viswanathan), Witherspoon is a high-flying TV producer whose sister (Meredith Hagner) is the other one. The script is strong for a "wacky comedy" of this sort, with an often staggering "gag-per-minute ratio", and Witherspoon, who also serves as a producer, "brings A-list smarts and a genuine performance. Like everything here, it's a cut above."
"There's a surprising amount of low-rent fun to be had" with this "simple and silly" Amazon crowdpleaser, said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. Yes, there are misses – "some overly absurdist physical comedy, a final song and dance" – but they're "just about outdone by the hits", and it's a pleasure to watch Witherspoon and Ferrell do their thing.
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