MIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES (Rated R)

Unlike the most recent review of a family friendly animated film, this column turns sharply in the other direction with “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,” where the “R” rating should be considered nothing short of a very hard-R.

This raunchy comedy, which deserves its adult rating for a smorgasbord of drug use, nudity, crude sexual content, profanity and general deviancy, seems modestly inspired by “Wedding Crashers,” yet taking the concept to another level.

What might be surprising is that the premise of two rowdy brothers needing “respectable” female dates for a family wedding is based on the true story of Mike and Dave Stangle posting an ad on Craigslist that goes viral and lands them on “The Wendy Williams Show.”

The screen versions of Mike and Dave are Adam Devine and Zac Efron respectively. Mike, the older sibling, is impulsive and a bit of a hothead. Dave is a little less prone to making trouble, but when paired with his brother all hell breaks loose.

Still in their 20s, Mike and Dave are New York liquor distributors who certainly don’t mind sampling their product, often to excess. This is what bothers their parents (Stephen Root and Stephanie Faracy) when the time comes for another family reunion.

The film has the promising start of any good raunchy comedy by highlighting the antics of the brothers as they invariably show up stag for a family gathering, get stinking drunk and proceed to destroy everything from wedding cakes to furniture.

With Mike and Dave’s little sister Jeanie (Sugar Lyn Beard) getting married in Hawaii, the parents stage an intervention with their unruly sons to demand that they bring nice girls as dates so that, theoretically, the wedding won’t be wrecked.

Thus begins the “audition” process as Mike and Dave go on a succession of double dates to find the right pair of girls to join them on the lure of an all-expense paid trip to the dream vacation destination of a Hawaii.

As you can imagine, the response to the online ad is overwhelming and Mike and Dave interview a strange field of candidates, from grungy girls to weird hippie chicks, paranoid girls and militant feminists, twin girls that look like guys and even girls that are guys.

But the brothers didn’t count on Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) and Alice (Anna Kendrick). In a very deceptive manner, these two girls seek out Mike and Dave and charm their way into the winning spot as wedding dates.

Unknown to the brothers, Tatiana and Alice are pretty intense, crazy, down-on-their-luck waitresses, tough chicks who decide they need a break and transform themselves into nice, sweet, respectable-looking women.

Not until they get to Hawaii do Mike and Dave realize they have met their match with Tatiana and Alice, both of them capable of drinking anyone under the table and causing even more mischief than the Stangle siblings could imagine.

Of course, there’s a slow build-up to the coming explosion of bad behavior. For Alice, who had been recently dumped at the altar, the sudden reality of a happy wedding is too much to bear as she drowns her sorrows in booze and drugs.

The real wild card, however, is Tatiana, a tough cookie from Philadelphia who is ready to party and go on adventures. While pretending to be what she is not, Tatiana has to fend off the advances of a smitten Mike, who feels he may have found the right girl after all.

Not surprisingly, wedding plans start to go awry and the brothers are only partially at fault. Well, maybe they should take all the blame. Accidents happen with an off-road vehicle, and Jeanie finds herself looking a little worse for the wear.

Alice unwisely convinces Jeanie to relax with copious amounts of drugs and a sexually suggestive massage at the resort’s spa. One thing leads to another, and suddenly the groom Eric (Sam Richardson), a mellow dude oblivious to the goings-on, starts to have second thoughts.

Of course, Mike and Dave, though hardly far from innocent of any shenanigans, will be held accountable for any mayhem that results. And, indeed, it would be an understatement to say things get out-of-hand.

Arguably, Alice and Tatiana, going completely out of control, steal the show from the idiot brothers, and as a result, “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” could just as easily been titled “Tatiana and Alice Go Wild.”

In any event, regardless of top billing, Dave and Alice and Mike and Tatiana create the oddball coupling of schemers and hard-charging party animals so that “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates” offers the raunchy laughs, though fitfully, to be expected from this type of comedy.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.