The 2025 film calendar has already supplied some nice choices for these taking a visit to the theater, however truthfully, isn’t it nice to generally be capable of get pleasure from A-list expertise from the consolation of your individual couch? To that finish, Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon want to cordially invite you to You’re Cordially Invited, a brand new rom-com obtainable with an Amazon Prime Video subscription. Followers have been trying ahead to seeing “Willerspoon” lastly come collectively on-screen, and critics — who screened the film forward of its January 30 launch — are right here to inform us if these excessive hopes will probably be fulfilled.
Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon are apparently “the pairing that you just didn’t know you wanted,” the SNL alum stated, as You’re Cordially Invited sees Jim and Margot go to conflict once they uncover his daughter’s wedding ceremony venue has been double-booked with Margot’s sister’s wedding ceremony. Briana Zigler of AV Membership, nevertheless, says she had hassle discovering any humor on this lazy romantic comedy. The critic offers it a D, writing:
You’re Cordially Invited is a rigorously unoriginal and uncreative movie, in compliance with the flat mundanity of content material that the streaming giants need their audiences to take pleasure in. Ferrell’s smiling, goofball face on the forefront of this monotony feels just like the waving white flag of an unchallenged artist who would fairly simply give in.
Brian Truitt of USA TODAY agrees, giving it 1.5 stars out of 4 for failing to search out the tonal stability between darkish satire and lighthearted rom-com. What’s extra, Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell lack chemistry as each pals and enemies. Truitt says:
It’s greatest to simply be wide-eyed about this unlucky rom-com state of affairs: There’s probably not a lot enjoyable in any respect available. Written and directed by Nicholas Stoller – who’s removed from the wry highs of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Neighbors right here – You’re Cordially Invited is just like the worst wedding ceremony you’ve ever gone to. It’s a bizarrely off-kilter affair that’s forcibly heartfelt and nostalgic in a single scene and overly mean-spirited within the subsequent, and never even just a few alternative moments and a few fulfilling surrounding weirdos might help two A-listers in approach over their heads.
Justin Clark of Slant additionally charges You’re Cordially Invited 1.5 out of 4 stars, saying this marriage of skills was doomed from the beginning. The movie doesn’t permit Reese Witherspoon to stretch her comedic muscle tissues, whereas Will Ferrell has the other drawback, forcing even delicate jokes into ridiculous realms. Clark continues:
You’re Cordially Invited follows an emotionally trustworthy confrontation about how lonely it may be for Margot to return to her low-class origins after making it in L.A. with a scene the place Jim wrestles an alligator. It then follows the abject, purposeful cringe of Jim and Jenni singing ‘Islands within the Stream’ with Margot telling a panicking Jenni that even her errors are worthwhile. There’s a fairly pretty movie ready to be constructed from the components right here, taking part in off of some genuinely affecting anxieties plaguing two very totally different households, however the precise movie is in the end at conflict with the a lot cartoonish hijinks that it clearly feels that it’s contractually obligated to offer.
Lisa Laman of Culturess says the film begins off robust however in the end devolves into horrible dialogue and drained rom-com tropes. In Laman’s phrases:
Any film the place Will Ferrell mournfully remembers ‘the saddest threeway of all-time’ with two different widows can’t be all dangerous. Ditto a movie the place Witherspoon usually seems to be like she’s two seconds away from jabbing a shard of glass in folks’s throats. Sadly, these chaotic qualities are the exception fairly than the norm in Invited’s runtime. Essentially the most magical moments at weddings are sometimes unplanned surprises. What a disgrace, then, that You’re Cordially Invited’s so dedicated to rigid storytelling impulses and lame ham-fisted dialogue.
John Serba of Decider says You’re Cordially Invited is nearly humorous sufficient and virtually heartwarming sufficient, however in the end the critic finds it “too lengthy, too pointlessly chaotic and in the end too blah to suggest.” Serba explains:
You’re Cordially Invited is a shade or two too zany for its personal good. That is perhaps acceptable if its comedy was extra sharply honed, and fewer depending on the wearisome tropes of the style – there are too many misses among the many many misunderstandings, miscommunications and mishaps right here. Jim and Margot are given just a few alternatives to reckon with their occasional forays into egocentric, juvenile habits and turn into legit human beings, however they discover themselves swept into the twister of anarchic tumult that Stoller insists is funnier than it’s. Anybody anticipating this assemblage of expertise to yield impressed farce will probably be disillusioned.
Critics have given the film a 43% Rotten Tomatoes rating, with the viewers’s Popcornmeter solely barely greater at 56%. This may occasionally not go down as certainly one of Will Ferrell’s funniest motion pictures or rank up there with the better of Reese Witherspoon, however if you happen to really feel like this duo is just too good to go up, in fact it is best to test it out your self and draw your individual conclusions.