On the Radio with popular NPR show

Wait, Wait...It's Houston

"And they thought it would never happen: All the liberals in Southeast Texas in one room," Peter Sagal joked to the capacity crowd at the Wortham Center Thursday night, to lively applause.

For the first time ever, NPR's popular quiz show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me made its way to Houston for a sold-out two-night event. It was equal parts entertainment and fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse of the making of a modern radio show.

Introduced one by one, host Peter Sagal and official judge and scorekeeper Carl Kasell stood at podiums on the left with panelists Paula Poundstone, Tom Bodett and Houston editor Kyrie O'Connor sitting at a table on the right, with an upholstered salmon-pink easy chair between them that Mayor Annise Parker occupied later in the show. Behind the panel, the seven-person crew worked in view of the audience.

Sagal warmed up the audience and apologized for any tardiness in the start of the production, mentioning that Kasell arrived in Houston from Washington, D.C. only 30 minutes before the beginning of the show, delayed almost a day from his original arrival time by the winter weather on the East coast. Sagal encouraged the audience to laugh and audibly have a good time, even if they had to "overcome their natural Texas quiet and reserve."

The show went, for the most part, exactly as heard on air, starting with a game of "Who's Carl," where a caller had to ID the source of three quotations (if "energy tax cuts lift American spirits" being written on Sarah Palin's left hand constitutes a quote), followed by Bluff the Listener and a Listener Limerick Challenge.

Paula Poundstone, still sporting her signature triangular bob and menswear attire, was by far the most talkative and funniest panelist, whether explaining her PopTart eating regimen, launching into an examination on the historical accuracy of F Troop or explaining her ambivalence on 3-D movies ("I see in three dimensions all the time. It's not that big of a deal to me").

Bodett was witty, if not loquacious, while O'Connor salvaged a mediocre night with her final assertion that under the Washington snow we'll find "Judge Cramer, Sasquatch, Jimmy Hoffa and the Republican Health Care Plan." When in doubt, know your audience.

In the middle of all this, Parker took to the stage and gamely tried to extoll the merits of Houston, though her defending it as an arts town somehow turned into trying to explain the Art Car Parade (and the possibility of pulling up next to a giant chicken car year-round), topped in ridiculousness only by Parker's mention that Houston strippers are required to wear official identification at all times.

(The show featuring Parker will be broadcast on KUHF-FM (88.7) Saturday at 10 a.m. Another show to be taped Friday night featuring ZZ Top will be broadcast later in the year.)

What was surprising was the length—the production ran just under two hours. Also funny was how at times the cast onstage would respond to each other without eye contact or recognition, a quirk of hearing everyone's voices through your headsets, I presume. After the show, Sagal and company ran through a three-minute set of corrections of flubs and then took questions from the audience, including one that I was thinking.

When Carl Kasell leaves the outgoing message on your voicemail (the standard listener prize), what does he say? Turns out, he says whatever you want. They played one example, and having now found more hilarious gems on the NPR Web site, I now covet my own Kasell message.

Hearing yourself on the radio? Meh. Hearing Carl Kasell sing "What's New, Pussycat?" on your machine? Priceless.

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Movie Review

Big stars struggle for laughs in wedding film You're Cordially Invited

Photo by Glen Wilson

Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon in You're Cordially Invited

There’s something about weddings that comedy filmmakers love. From Four Weddings and a Funeral to The Wedding Singer to Wedding Crashers to Bridesmaids and beyond, the act of two people getting married provides plenty of opportunities for conflict, mixups, and mayhem on which comedies often thrive.

So the premise of You’re Cordially Invited, in which two weddings at a small island venue are accidentally booked on the same weekend, would seem to be rife with funny situations. Jim (Will Ferrell) is the single dad of Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan), while Margot (Reese Witherspoon) is the high-powered sister of Neve (Meredith Hagner). Both have a connection to the Palmetto Hotel, and both think they have secured the first Saturday in June for the wedding of their family members.

The confusion over finding out the venue has been double-booked is initially met with reason and compromise. But as the two wedding parties butt heads jockeying for position among the island’s limited resources, tempers start to flare, and both Jim and Margot start to lean toward sabotage. What’s supposed to be the happiest day of their lives for the brides turns into a nightmare for both as their loved ones try to find ways to get back at one another.

Written and directed by Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors, Bros), the film is heavily dependent on the talents of its two stars. The scenes in which Ferrell and Witherspoon face off are the most enjoyable, as each uses skills they’ve learned over their long careers to elevate the film. Unfortunately, Stoller seemed to put most of his effort into their scenes, as anything involving their characters’ friends and families falls flat.

Stoller actually sets up the various quirks and tensions between the two groups well, but it's the execution of the subsequent scenes that is lacking. Whether it’s the fault of the editing team or Stoller himself, the pacing of the film is way off. Some scenes are cut short before they reach a good resolution, and others are extended well past the point of being funny.

The film mostly suffers from giving too much in certain situations and not enough in others. Jenni has a mostly anonymous group of female friends, portrayed by actors who all seem to have been given instructions to act over the top at all times, a trait that is more annoying than amusing. On the other hand, the craziness that the film seems to promise with its central premise never materializes. The acts of sabotage by Jim and Margot are so tame that they can’t even be called entertaining, much less hilarious.

The performances in the film face diminishing returns the further you go down the cast list. Both Ferrell and Witherspoon are talented enough to get by on charm alone, and even if these are far from their best roles, it’s still fun to see them. Viswanathan and Hagner are both fine, but the rest of the cast is uniformly uninteresting and occasionally off-putting.

You’re Cordially Invited is a great example of past results not equaling future success. Given the good films that Ferrell, Witherspoon, and Stoller have made in the past, it should have been relatively easy for them to make a pleasant if forgettable wedding movie. Instead, it’s a mostly unfunny affair with only a few moments that rise to their talents.

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You're Cordially Invited is now streaming on Prime Video.

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