The Wedding Planner Movie Review:


The Wedding Planner is a bland film that misfires constantly on comedy and romance. When it comes to planning weddings, Mary Fiore (Lopez) is the best in the business. Mary fills the weddings she works on with beauty and love. However, Mary has been out of the love loop for a long time. After an unbelievable accident one day, Mary meets Steve (McConaughey) and immediately falls for him. Mary soon finds out that the current wedding she is planning for a bride named Fran (Wilson-Sampras) will make her salary skyrocket. There is only one problem; Steve is the man that is marrying Fran. As the two continue to argue, Mary and Steve rekindle on an understood business relationship to plan the wedding together. Through both know that the one-day they spent together should be forgotten, but neither can forget it.

The Wedding Planner is another comedy rip-off of My Best Friend’s Wedding and Father of the Bride. The film overall becomes so dense that it is neither funny nor moving as it is intended to be.

Pamela Faulk and Michael Ellis based their concept for The Wedding Planner off of an ad in the Learning Annex catalog on "How to be a Wedding Planner." A lonely wedding planner that searches for love doesn’t sound like a bad idea for a script; these writers’ version just didn’t work. The script is so predictable, cheesy and for the most part fake. I saw the characters as one-dimensional without any ties or life in them. I also thought the relationships were dull and the sequencing of the script seemed lost. Many stupid circumstances and events tie all the characters together by the end of the film in a typical manner. Overall, I found that the writers had an idea to work with for a movie, but the end result was a terrible script.

Adam Shankman’s direction reflected to me that he was making a made for television film rather than a motion picture. He blankly directs certain moments that are presented with a corny-like feeling. Examples are when Mary reveals her marriage-emergency pack around her waist, and when she is seen panically putting on lipstick to impress Steve. The director also didn’t capture any type of feelings, in which I saw the film’s intention to be warm and fuzzy. However, the comedy is worse, I only real laughed at one instant in this film.

Jennifer Lopez is weary as the workaholic-wedding planner Mary. Lopez just wasn’t convincing, even though she tried to give her character some personality. I believe some of it could be blamed on the "lifeless" script. She is a pretty stable leading actress; I liked her work in The Cell and was really impressed with her in Selena. Her counterpart, Matthew McConaughey does what he can with the character of Steve, but he does do much either. I really do like McConaughey, he is a good leading actor, and he just needs to pick better films. Together, Lopez and McCounaghey reflect that they had a good time making this film, but the two had hardly any believable on-screen chemistry. Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, who plays the bride Fran, contributes by smiling a lot and becomes one of the antagonists of the film. I have seen this cast of actors do a lot better work before, all of them try to carry this film, but they all come up short.

Like I said before, I found The Wedding Planner as sort of a rip-off that had an idea, but an overall weak script. This film appeals to a large demographic of moviegoers, so it shouldn’t have a problem making money.

Report Card Grade: D+

Copyright, 2001

Joseph C. Tucker

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