The Wedding Date Movie Review:


Lacking chemistry between its co-stars, “The Wedding Date” falters as a romantic comedy. Fortunately, Dermot Mulroney, portraying a very expensive male escort, provides enough eye-candy and mystery to save this movie from being a total disaster. He’s suave, charismatic -- and, as Debra Messing’s character tells him, “worth every penny” of his $6,000 fee for posing as her new boyfriend at her sister’s wedding.

Kat Ellis (Messing) is willing to spend that much money on Nick Mercer (Mulroney) because she wants to make her ex (Jeremy Sheffield), the guy who dumped her, jealous. It’s just icing on the cake when women of all ages in the wedding party also show how much they envy her. They drool over Nick in practically every scene. Naturally, before you can say “Surprise!” Kat and Nick fall hard for each other. Too bad their romantic feelings seemed forced and unreal to me. Not at all like the convincing sparks between such couples as Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman in “Kate & Leopold” or Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant in “Two Weeks Notice” or Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler in “The Wedding Singer.”

Without the necessary on-screen chemistry between leading man and leading lady, a romantic comedy must rely on humor to carry the day. Unfortunately, “The Wedding Date” also falls short on laughs. Messing, so amusing on TV’s “Will and Grace,” fails to display her impeccable comic timing here, much to my disappointment. Granted, she doesn’t have much of a script to work with, but I think she needed to try harder, especially in scenes where situations cried out for more exaggerated physical comedy to enliven the story. Some people compare Messing to the late great Lucille Ball, but I saw no such resemblance in this performance.

Weddings traditionally abound with material for hilarious dramatization on screen. “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding” (also with Mulroney) come to mind. But, as directed by Clare Kilner (“How To Deal”), “The Wedding Date” substitutes a series of unfunny scenes -- such as those showing bridesmaids on a drunken spree and silly misunderstandings about who slept with whom -- for that fine comic tradition.

Mulroney, who cracked me up in his almost unrecognizable role as Jack Nicholson’s future son-in-law in “About Schmidt,” seems placed in a straightjacket by the confines of Dana Fox’s humorless screenplay. Still, his character emerges as the most intriguing, and I wanted to know more about him. Why did Nick Mercer become a paid male escort? What kind of family did he come from? How would he behave in a normal situation? Hmm. Maybe all this has been saved for a sequel.



Betty Jo Tucker

Essentially a reverse-gender remake of Pretty Woman with a little Four Weddings thrown in, this sunny rom-com is perfectly watchable even if it's deeply lazy filmmaking. There's very little thought or wit, but it's still sweeter than most of these things.

Kat (Messing) is a pathetic single woman in New York (is there another kind?) heading off to London for the wedding of her sister (Adams) to a foppy Englishman (Davenport) whose best friend (Sheffield) happens to be Kat's ex. So to make him jealous, Kat hires a handsome escort (Mulroney) to accompany her. Naturally, nothing goes as planned. Until of course it all comes together predictably in the end, with a few tiny twists.

Messing breaks free from her Will & Grace role, but only slightly. She's still neurotic, but in a darker, sadder sort of way. This makes her marginally more likable, especially as she becomes less clingy and uptight as the story progresses. Which doesn't happen for any reason beyond the requirements of the script (which might argues simplistically that it's due to the attentions of a good man). As a comic actress, she's clearly willing to do anything, performing with her entire body and winning us over in the end. Everyone else is exactly what you expect--charming, funny, devious, saucy, self-absorbed. And they all do it well, but without much distinction.

The main problem, besides the general lack of originality, is that the writing and direction are so profoundly unambitious. Everything feels perfunctory, from the montage of London landmarks to the stream of wedding-related set pieces (drinks party, stag/hen nights, weekend in the country, the chaotic ceremony). It's all extremely obvious, replacing subtlety with sap. And badly written sap at that. Each plot point feels stale and overused, and the dialog isn't remotely smart, which makes the characters seem like simpletons--although at least they're not natural comic geniuses, like comedy characters usually are. In the end we go along with it merely because it's there. But I doubt I'll remember anything about this movie 10 minutes from now.

Rich Cline

After been dumped by her fiancé Jeffrey (Sheffield) two years earlier, Kat (Messing) has to return to England for the first time for her sister Amy’s (Adams) wedding. No wanting to look depressingly single and wanting to rub Jeffery’s face in it, Kat hires a very handsome male escort to accompany her. Her plan doesn’t exactly work out the way she wanted it to however.

The romantic comedy is becoming the backbone of the British film industry but does ‘The Wedding Date’ have what it takes to be successful in the genre?

Combining elements from ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, ‘Notting Hill’ and ‘Pretty Woman’, ‘The Wedding Date’ isn’t the most original but there is still a lot of fun to be had for the target audience, women. While this is the kind of film that boyfriends and husbands will be reluctantly dragged to, this isn’t a completely girly experience, as there are gags and situations that will generate amusement in both of the sexes.

The plot of the film is nothing new. Quite simply put it is ‘Pretty Woman’ in reverse. Now it is a male ‘escort’ who discovers there is life outside of the business and that true love can save him from a life of depravity. This is then transported into your usual British romantic comedy filled with upper class twits from London (the only place in Britain according to Hollywood), people with double barrel names and extravagant countryside weddings.

Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney are the American leads in the British cast. As everyone knows, Debra Messing is a gifted comedic actress and the role of Kat plays on this fact, the problem is that she is very similar to Grace from her hit TV show ‘Will & Grace’. This shouldn’t put you off however because it is these qualities that make the character so endearing. Dermot Mulroney as Nick is employed as the eye candy for the ladies but he is the ‘escort’ with a heart and he just wants to be loved. The problem with the character is that we don’t really learn that much about him or his background, we just get women longingly staring at him.

The British cast are fine. Jack Davenport is his usual floppy haired self, Sarah Parish is the loud, straight talking, life and soul of the party best friend but Jeremy Sheffield is far too smarmy as the ex, making you wonder what Kat saw in him in the first place.

‘The Wedding Date’ is an enjoyable rom-com that will entertain women a lot more than the men but this is the film’s target audience. With a few good one-liners and a British take on ‘Pretty Woman’, this will keep you entertained and keep husbands and boyfriends in their better half’s good books if you take them to see this.

Star Rating (for the target audience) =

Jamie Kelwick

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