ANNA Kendrick has a theory as to why weddings make such great backdrops for comedies:
"I think it's weird when you get two different families together and a bunch of friends who've never met, and everyone's supposed to be on their best behaviour," muses the Pitch Perfect star.
"Whenever people are supposed to be on their best behaviour, it's sort of a recipe for disaster.
"So, these are the social rules of this situation, follow them or you'll be in trouble. People freak out and act in weird ways, drink too much and usually things go wrong. I love it!"
Kendrick (30) stars alongside Zac Efron, Adam DeVine and Aubrey Plaza in the upcoming Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates, a movie that not only celebrates all that can go wrong at wedding, but is based on a true event.
On February 13 2013, the not so shy and retiring brothers Mike and Dave Stangle posted an online ad in which they revealed they were seeking out dates for their sister's wedding.
Fed up with their usual flirty, drunken, chaos-inducing shenanigans, their family had demanded the duo invite respectable dates. Wary of giving the girls they knew the wrong idea – namely any indication that they wanted to get serious – Mike and Dave decided to look for complete strangers instead.
"We wrote it, kind of thinking it was a joke that we could send to each other," reveals Dave.
They received thousands of responses and, after their ad went viral, even wound up on the likes of the Today show and CNN. A book titled Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates: And A Thousand Cocktails, depicting tales from their adolescence as well as their musings on a range of topics, was later released.
Now, here comes the movie.
In the film, Efron and DeVine play Dave and Mike respectively, while Kendrick and Plaza play Alice and Tatiana, the women who charm their way onto the all-expenses paid trip on offer.
While the real-life wedding took place in North-East America, the film-makers decided to move the action to Hawaii.
"Zac and I arrived in Oahu two weeks before production started, and we didn't know anyone else there. Who else am I going to hang out with?" recalls DeVine, who also starred with Kendrick in the Pitch Perfect movies.
"We became the best of buds; by the end of production, we finished each other's sentences in a weird way."
The real-life brothers' reputation for partying proved well-deserved when they visited the set.
"They were always like, 'Yo, let's go out tonight'," recalls Efron (28), the former High School Musical star whose more recent credits include The Paperboy and Bad Neighbors.
"Adam and I would be like, 'Isn't it Tuesday? We have a 6am call time'."
DeVine first met them one late morning – when "they were already drunk".
"I was like, 'Yeah OK, they're really going for it! They are these characters!" recalls the 32-year-old, laughing.
"They're also super handsome dudes and 6ft 5in. It was very intimidating meeting them," he continues.
"I was like, 'How did I get this part?' But they were really cool and you could see why they would shoot a movie based loosely on their life, because they're the types people gravitate towards and want to party with."
As for the casting choices, DeVine quips that he "didn't hear them complain – but behind closed doors, I bet they were going, 'I can't believe you got Zac and I got Adam'."
The film's been given a 15 certificate for its gross-out gags, but director Jake Szymanski says the brotherly bond is what's at the core of the comedy.
"Mike and Dave are close. They've grown up together, still live together, work together, party together, and ultimately learn some lessons together. But they have their differences," he explains.
"Mike's a bit of a hot-head. He's also impulsive and a little selfish and inconsiderate, while Dave has a little more capability to reason than Mike."
Efron adds: "Dave is very much the younger brother and follows Mike's lead. But as Mike starts to lose his mind over Tatiana, the roles of the two guys are reversed, and Dave has to take charge and be the big brother."
Whatever their differences, Mike and Dave couldn't be more tight-knit.
"They have a symbiotic relationship," says Efron.
"They can't exist without one another. They're as much best friends as they are brothers."
Plaza, recognisable from long-running US series Parks And Recreation, describes Tatiana as a founding member of the 'Bad Girls Club'.
"She's a tough bitch from Philadelphia who doesn't take s*** from anyone. She is the Alpha in any group."
Tatiana wants to help her best friend Alice after being stranded at the altar.
"A wedding is about the last place Alice should be and her downward spiral continues," says Kendrick of her character's coping mechanism – the bottle.
They get into all sorts of strife, including stripping off when Alice and Tatiana decide to release horses from a stable – also how Efron winds up topless once again.
"The original plan was for me to wear a burlap sack of horse feed," Kendrick reveals.
"But the team couldn't get it to look right. So they were like, 'Well, what if Zac just gives her the shirt?'
"Zac was like, 'I almost made it through a movie without taking my shirt off'."
:: Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates is released on Wednesday August 10
