Review: The Wedding Ringer

City Paper grade: C

Until Kevin Hart pulls a Top Five-style career pivot and starts appearing in ill-conceived historical dramas, we could do worse than Jeremy Garelick's raunchy and formulaic rated-R comedy, whose laughs are cheap lipstick on a roundly cynical view of the marriage institution. Josh Gad, doing his whole squeaky-voiced, doughy-waisted loveable loser thing, is set to marry an out-of-his-league Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, save for one problem — a nomadic childhood has left his half of the wedding party way sparse. Lucky, then, that he hooks up with Hart's Jimmy Callahan, a gifted schmoozer who runs a best-man-for-hire business out of the basement of a seedy amusement park. The twosome does end up cultivating some winsome comedic chemistry, but that's not too hard to nail when the jokes, multiple dick-and-balls digs aside, are so easy. There's nothing you don't see coming, at least on the surface, and that's fine. But brush away the frat-boy topsoil and you'll find a much more sinister commentary on the commercial side of modern-day nuptials. Hart's hustler profits off the phony, pretentious and unrealistic expectations of the betrothed. Another character manipulates his own sexuality just to make a buck off the bride's pop. Basically, the entire process turns everyone it touches into hideous monsters. It's actually pretty damn dark for a movie that features an extended gag involving peanut butter-aided dog fellatio. Mazel tov!