Sex romp comedies set around weddings are so commonplace it’s a wonder anyone even makes them anymore. They are always filled with the same characters going through the same motions as all the other pictures before them,
with occasional laughs along the way. “What Boys Like” (originally released in 2001 as “The Groomsmen”) breaks the tradition by not going for the laughs, instead opting to present a comedy that isn’t even funny.
To delve into the plot is an exercise in redundancy. We’ve seen it before, and if we hadn’t, we’d still realize the outcome as soon as the bride (Lisa Brenner) and a guy named Jay (Christopher Wiehl), who is not the groom, are revealed to have been high school sweethearts. If you don’t know the ending just by reading that, you haven’t seen more than five movies.
In addition to knowing the story, we also know that these kinds of films revolve around stock characters (the ethically challenged one, the sex obsessed one, the clueless one, the good guy, etc.), and we understand that all the jokes are basically sex-oriented or of the gross-out variety. Audiences will accept these clices, but only if there is some sort of pay off like a twist nobody saw coming, or at the very least a few hearty chuckles. To not deliver any of that is a sure sign of death, which makes this DOA.
This boy did not like this film at all, and I doubt anyone of either sex would disagree with me.
