Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is a 2016 American comedy film that stars Zac Efron, Adam Devine, Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza.
Stangle brothers Mike (Devine) and Dave (Efron) are young, adventurous, fun-loving brothers who tend to get out of control at family gatherings. When their sister Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard) reveals her Hawaiian wedding plans, the rest of the clan insists that they both bring respectable dates. After placing an ad on Craigslist, the siblings decide to pick Tatiana (Plaza) and Alice (Kendrick), two charming and seemingly normal waitresses. Once they arrive on the island, however, Mike and Dave realize that their companions are ready to get wild and party hard.
Tropes:
- The Ace: Terry, who is implied to have a six-figure job, knows Chris Rock personally, and has the confidence to score with just about anyone of either sex.
- Bad Liar: Alice and Tatiana. They try to lie their way out of many things to be a Karma Houdini duo. Their first example was trying to scam the taxi driver of a free ride cause they're broke and Alice saying a tsunami took away her and Jeanie's clothes (cause she didn't want to admit to having drugged Jeanie with ecstasy).
- Beware the Nice Ones: The normally friendly and kind Eric lets out a Precision F-Strike speech about how Mike, Dave, Tatiana, Alice ruined the wedding with their selfishness.
- Big Brother Instinct: The only reason Dave and Mike clean up their acts is to make Jeanie happy. And when they botch the wedding, along with Tatiana and Alice, they go to great lengths to fix it.
- Big Little Brother: Dave is younger than Mike and about as tall but he's later proven to be able to easily kick his brother's ass.
- Birds of a Feather: Mike and Dave are this with Tatiana and Alice, respectively. Each couple are fun-loving, irresponsible individuals who tend to be self-absorbed. Specifically, Tatiana and Mike are both competitive who pretend to have a tough front when they're actually scared; Dave and Alice are nice people who tend to act as something of Morality Chains for the former.
- Book Dumb: Mike and Alice. The former keeps dropping the word 'assuage' into sentences but has no idea what it means; the latter picks 'hedge fund manager' as her fictional job to impress Dave but has absolutely no knowledge about what they actually do.
- Butt-Monkey: Jeanie. Prior to her wedding, Mike accidentally hits her straight in the face with his ATV and he walks in on her Immodest Orgasm during the "extra special" massage Alice paid for. Alice then gives her ecstasy for the first time on the night before her wedding, and Dave finds her and Alice rambling incoherently while completely naked at the stables. Finally, she and Eric nearly cancel the wedding when she expresses doubts about marrying him.
- Chick Magnet: When Dave and Mike first post an on Craigslist to ask for wedding dates, all of the women who see the ad say they want Dave.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Tatiana.
- Dissonant Laughter: One pair of female interviewees for Mike and Dave's ad do nothing but laugh whenever Mike or Dave says anything. Whether or not Mike and Dave found them pretty, it's obvious they had no choice but to decline those girls.
- The Ditz: While all 4 protagonists (Mike and Dave, Alice and Tatiana) display signs of being this, Alice seems to be the dumbest of them.
- Drugs Are Bad: Alice and Tatiana are junkies, and their lifestyles are less than desirable or glorious.
- Even the Girls Want Her: Mike, Dave, and Jeanie's bisexual cousin, Terry, says word-for-word that she wants to have sex with Tatiana.
- Everybody Has Standards: When Mike wants to put eyedrops in Terry's wine to make her shit herself as payback for catching her being fingered by Tatiana, Dave is against the idea.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Jeanie is the responsible (calm and mature) to Mike and Dave's foolish (wild Man Children). Throughout the movie, it's shown that Dave is the responsible to Mike's foolish, the former being the one to call out the latter for his increasing immaturity and pettiness.
- Gold Digger: The reason Alice and Tatiana agreed to go on wedding dates with Mike and Dave is because they lost their jobs as skimpy-dressed waitresses and are desperate for even basic necessities like food and housing. The two aren't alone, lots of socially inept girls try to win the wedding date with Mike and Dave but are all turned down.
- Groin Attack: Terry punches Mike in the groin when they get in a brawl over who gets to sleep with Tatiana.
- Hairy Girl: When Jeanie gets naked, everyone, including the audience, is shocked to see she has a huge bush.
- Hand-or-Object Underwear: A naked Alice covers her breasts with the mane of a horse that happened to be standing right in front of her.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners:
- Mike and Dave aren't just brothers...they’re each other's best friends.
- Tatiana and Alice have been best friends since they were kids, and Tatiana was the bridesmaid at Alice's first wedding that got botched.
- Hidden Depths:
- Dave is shown to be very good at drawing. And also, while stopping Mike from putting eyedrops in Terry's wine glass, he states that a key ingredient in eyedrops hasn't been used for years.
- At the end, Tatiana shows some skill in decoration at Eric and Jeanie's wedding.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Eric practically towers over the smaller Jeanie.
- Is This Thing Still On?: While backstage, Mike accidentally tells everyone else about his plan to poison Terry, his Mistaken for Cheating moment with Jeanie and a masseur, and the fact that he saw Tatiana fingerbang Terry in the sauna. Hilarity Ensues.
- Jerkass: Jeanie, Mike, and Dave's cousin Terry spends most of the film acting like a jerk to Mike. However, she does have a minor Pet the Dog moment.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Mike may be the most immature and petty of siblings, but his heart is always in the right place.
- Tatiana may not be as nice Alice, but she does have a good heart.
- Large Ham: Mike has a massive, childish freakout over just about everything. Especially over when he saw Tatiana giving a handjob to Terry.
- Like Parent, Like Spouse: The way Eric blows up at Mike, Dave, Tatiana, and Alice is very similar to how his father-in-law blows up at his sons.
- Manchild: Deconstructed. While Mike and Dave are harmless, their immaturity has caused a number of problems at family gatherings, with their father having to bluntly ask when they were going to grow up.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Mike walks in on Jeanie getting a very...unusual massage (Alice had bribed the masseur to give her "a little extra" beforehand).
- Morality Pet: Mike and Dave decide to shape up for Jeanie's upcoming wedding.
- Dave and Alice act as ones for Mike and Tatiana.
- Naked People Trapped Outside: While Alice did take her clothes off just for fun while letting the horses loose, she hides her genitals with a horse so that Dave can't see. However, Dave's sister Jeanie proudly flaunts her whole naked front to her own brother (which makes him really uncomfortable).
- Never My Fault: Mike blaming Jeanie's face accident (which he directly caused) upon the girls.
- Not Me This Time: It seems that the only real reason that Dave is considered to blame for Jeannie's wedding falling apart is because he's one of the usual suspects and is always with his brother. Nothing that went wrong, at the wedding at least, was directly and actively his fault: The ATV thing was the girls, and Mike hit Jeannie; Dave had absolutely no part in the spa scene; Dave was trying to stop Mike from being a dick and only got into a fight because Mike wouldn't stop running at him; Alice was obviously the one who gave Jeannie the pills. The ONLY destructive thing he did the whole movie (outside of the other family events) was throw his suitcase at a TV after everything was already ruined. If anything, Dave came off as the Innocent Bystander in this scenario.
- Official Couple: Besides Eric and Jeanie getting married, Mike and Dave end up as couples with Tatiana and Alice, respectively.
- Pet the Dog: A small one, but Terry quietly states how Mike didn't screw up Jeanie's wedding.
- Please Put Some Clothes On: Dave to Jeanie, as he did not like to see his own sister fully nude.
- Runaway Groom: Features heavily in Alice's backstory, as her fiancé not only left her at the altar, but came back just to get his phone and affirm that he still didn't want to get married, leaving Alice psychologically devastated at the memory.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Mike. Oh so much and so often.
- Self-Serving Memory: The movie opens with a montage of Mike and Dave at various family events, laughing, playing and everyone having a great time. When their parents talk of how they "ruin everything," the two are thrown, talking of how everyone loves having them around. In answer, their parents show a video of the real events, where Mike and Dave's antics ruin the party, cause massive property damage and often result in injuries. The brothers are honestly thrown, asking where are "the epic tracking shots of smiling faces" they remember.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man:
- Alice starts to like Dave because he's "super nice".
- Deconstructed with Jeanie. While she loves all of Eric's good qualities, she fears that he may be too boring. However, she's proven wrong.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: When they arrive in Hawaii, Alice and Tatiana and Mike and Dave talk to each other about their sexual intentions for the trip, and Alice and Dave both reference Fifty Shades of Grey.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Dave is actually much more mature than Mike is when the latter isn't around to rile him up. Their dad even has a private conversation with Dave at the beginning where he apologizes for lumping him with Mike and admits that he feels Mike's influence is holding Dave back.
- Foolish decisions like getting Jeanie a 'special massage' and giving her ecstasy aside, Alice is a lot nicer compared to Tatiana. Tatiana even lampshades the trope, saying that while she wants Alice to get better after the latter's fiance left her at the alter, but not better enough where Alice would leave her.
- Uptown Guys: Mike and Dave come from a pretty wealthy, upper-class family unlike the working-class Alice and Tatiana.
- Would Hit a Girl: When Mike catches Tatiana fingering Terry, he flies into a rage he goes to attack Terry...and gets beaten. He then comes up with a plan to put eyedrops into her drink so she'll shit herself, because he saw it in Wedding Crashers.
