'You're Cordially Invited' Is Almost Exactly What You Want It To Be

It is so rare to see a trailer, imagine the best-case scenario for it, and then actually watch that vision come to fruition. Prime Video’s You’re Cordially Invited is like a mash-up of Bride Wars and Wedding Crashers, starring Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, and directed by Nicholas Stoller, the writer/director of Get Him to the Greek and The Five-Year Engagement. It’s as good as some of his better work and precisely as funny as you’d hope a Will Ferrell/Reese Witherspoon movie could be.

Ferrell plays Jim, the widowed father of Jenni (Blockers’ Geraldine Viswanathan). He’s as smothering as one might expect from a single father who lost his wife. Witherspoon is Margot, a television producer whose sister, Neve (Meredith Hagner), is marrying a charming, bumpkin stripper named Dixon (Jimmy Tatro). Due to a scheduling mishap, Jim and Margot end up booking the same small island for their respective weddings on the same weekend. The island can only accommodate one wedding.

There’s some initial “No, f**k you; it’s my venue!” / “No, f**k you. I was here first!” back and forth, but before long, both wedding parties agree to share the island. The real friction comes in how they divide the space and inevitably get involved in each other’s business. There’s some amusing sabotage, but that’s not the film’s primary driver. Jim initially bonds with Margot’s family, but as the weekend unfolds, Margot reconnects with her own estranged family — united by their common enemy in Jim. Ultimately, however, everyone wants both couples to get their happy ending (even if that involves a Jonas Brother singing a Creed song).

It mostly works. Ferrell is at his most Ferrellian — an almost feral bridezilla dad who, I swear, has black eyes at certain moments. Witherspoon cranks her Tracy Flick energy up to 11, first attempting to Type-A her way through the weekend before embracing full-blown revenge. And the pairing of Ferrell and Witherspoon clicks — you get the sense that Witherspoon probably finds Ferrell both hilarious and deeply annoying in real life, too. That said, the romantic chemistry between the two is nonexistent, which makes the leap to romantic comedy stumble in the end.

As with any good comedy, the supporting cast is packed with scene-stealers: Viswanathan, Hagner, and Tatro are genuinely fun, alongside Rory Scovel, Keyla Monterroso Mejia, and Ramona Young as members of the wedding party, Celia Weston as the mother of the bride, Jack McBrayer as the venue owner, and a couple of cameos from Peyton Manning and, inexplicably, Wyatt Russell.

Ferrell and Witherspoon have built incredible careers spanning comedy and drama, but there’s something deeply satisfying about seeing them do what they do best: making people laugh. And You’re Cordially Invited finally feels like a streaming comedy that’s more than just the sum of its famous leads. Stoller isn’t just a hired hand—he’s a genuinely talented writer and director of comedies, and this is probably his best work since Neighbors.

You’re Cordially Invited isn’t quite on the level of the two films it evokes—Wedding Crashers and Sweet Home Alabama—but in the era of streaming comedies, it’s about as good as a major studio can deliver. I had a good time, laughed more than a few times, and spent nearly two hours not thinking about the world around us. That’s about as much as one can ask for in 2025.