Box office The film was released in North America on July 15, 2005, and became an immediate hit, grossing $33,900,720 in its first weekend, opening at #2 in the box office, behind
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Exit polling indicated that 60% of audiences were over 25 years old, and almost evenly split between men and women. The film would prove fruitful, reaching #1 at the box office in its third week and eventually grossing over $209,255,921 domestically, making it the 6th highest-grossing domestic film of 2005 and the first R-rated comedy to earn over 200 million dollars at the U.S. Box office. On
Metacritic, the film has a score of 64 out of 100 based on reviews from 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by
CinemaScore gave the film a grade A−. Carina Chocano of the
Los Angeles Times wrote a favorable review, and in particular praised Vaughn's performance: "Jeremy is the soul of the movie. There's something about Vaughn—the deadpan eyes; the sublimated, misdirected intelligence—that recalls Bill Murray in his
Caddyshack years." Chocano was critical of Will Ferrell's "hyper-active bonehead routine" and called the interlude awful. She added that the film was "really just a love story about a couple of buddies who live happily ever after. And it couldn't have happened to a nicer, more charming couple". Brian Lowry of
Variety described the film as "fairly amusing, fitfully over the top and [...] occasionally a touch homophobic". He praised McAdams as she manages to "fill in narrative gaps and actually creates a real character", said Vaughan's dialog had most of the comedic highlights, and wrote that Walken was underused. Lowry concluded, "While neither a full-throated R-rated romp a la ''
There's Something About Mary nor a fully realized romantic comedy, Wedding Crashers'' contains enough appealing elements of both to catch the bouquet in what's been a relatively humor-deprived summer".
Joe Morgenstern of
The Wall Street Journal called the film "the best comedy of 2005" while
Entertainment Weekly's
Lisa Schwarzbaum described the film as "an unabashedly jiggly, bawdy, it’s-all-good comedy.
Manohla Dargis of
The New York Times wrote, "It's crude, yes, but also funny; too bad these lost boys can't stay lost. Like clockwork, the film soon mutates from a guy-oriented sex comedy into a wish-fulfillment chick flick".
Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two stars out of four; although he wrote that "there are individual moments that are very funny", he added that the director, David Dobkin, "has too much else on his mind". British film magazine
Empire awarded it three out of five stars and were complimentary to Vaughn and Wilson, saying "Sharing an easy chemistry and free of the usual joker/straight-guy dynamic, Wilson and Vaughn quip, riff and banter to hilarious effect. And both get their fair share of money moments, the latter's muggings are particularly hysterical in a raunchy dinner-party sequence. The laidback stars are funny and sweet, but they're let down by a patchy script which squanders some potentially priceless set-ups." Kimberley Jones of
The Austin Chronicle opined that the film "will no doubt make buckets of money, but it'll do so without half the wit, compassion, or inspired madness" that ''There's Something About Mary'' had. Jones complained that the plot was "mostly cookie-cutter stuff", and was offended by the portrayal of minorities, writing "gays and blacks are represented, respectively, by a squirrelly psychotic and a Jamaican house servant". Jones concluded, "A stiff drink or maybe some pharmaceutical assistance might have made me overlook the film's sour tone or the unremarkableness of its direction." In 2018, Scott Meslow of
GQ reassessed the film after initially liking it upon its release. He wrote, "Even beyond the gender and sexual dynamics that have aged rather poorly,
Wedding Crashers feels awfully uneven today." He noted a date-rape joke in the opening minutes, and also identified the use of the sassy racist grandmother trope. In addition, he called the predatory gay man trope "inexcusably unfunny" and felt that the film trivializes rape. Lastly, he opined that the female characters were underdeveloped and called Will Ferrell's cameo lazy. However, Meslow added that "For all its faults, [the film] does have an extremely strong pair of leads".
Accolades On April 24, 2006,
Wedding Crashers topped the nominations for the year's
MTV Movie Awards with five including Best Movie. It won Best Movie, On-Screen Team (Vaughn and Wilson), and Breakthrough Performance (Isla Fisher).
Home media Wedding Crashers was released on
DVD in the United States on January 3, 2006, by
New Line Home Entertainment, and a
Blu-ray was released on December 30, 2008. It is available in an unrated version ("Uncorked Edition") and in an R-rated version (the Blu-ray has both versions on one disc). It features eight new minutes integrated into the film and DVD-ROM bonuses. Also included are two
audio commentaries (one by the stars, one by the director), four
deleted scenes, two featurettes, a "Rules of Wedding Crashing" text gallery,
trailers,
Budweiser Wedding Crashers commercials, a track listing for the official soundtrack on
20th Century Fox Records, a
music video by
The Sights, and a jump-to-a-song sample feature. The film earned an estimated $145 million from home media sales. == Legacy ==