Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon’s New Rom-Com Is Destined to Be This Year’s Anyone But You

The Amazon Prime Video rom-com You’re Cordially Invited is written and directed by Nicholas Stoller, who made some of the more memorable comedies of the 2000s and 2010s, including Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the Neighbors movies. His new film is a would-be throwback to that era in other ways as well. It co-stars two of the biggest box-office draws of the aughts, Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, albeit each in a role neither of them would have taken on at that time: Ferrell because his shambling every-oaf persona lent itself better to broad buddy comedies than to warmhearted romances, and Witherspoon because, 20 years ago, she would have been cast as the high-maintenance bride herself, rather than that character’s micromanaging older sister. The idea of bringing together these two titans of Hollywood likability—veterans, in Ferrell’s case literally, of the old-school studio comedy—had promise. Emphasis on the “had.”

Ferrell’s Jim is a single-dad widower who’s been raising his only child, Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan of Blockers and 2020’s Bad Education), since she was 6 years ...
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