One Wedding and No Funerals

The Wedding Date (2005)   

"The Wedding Date" starring Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney is an entertaining mildly enjoyable romcom which has one major flaw it's all so very unoriginal. From the storyline through to the performances as well as the humour it is all ever so familiar as if it has been manufactured by cherry picking elements from other movies and incorporating them into one movie. The thing is "The Wedding Date" is not a manufactured movie in this sense but an adaptation of Elizabeth Young's novel "Asking for Trouble" so somewhere in the production something must have gone wrong to make it feel so unoriginal.

Returning home to London for her sister's wedding is not something Kat (Debra Messing) is looking forward to, not just because she is single and can't get a date, but because her ex is the best man. So to kill two birds with one stone, get a date and make her ex very jealous, she hires male gigolo Nick (Dermot Mulroney) to accompany her at the princely sum of $6000 plus a return plane ticket. But a simple business transaction turns into something a lot less simple.

The thing is with "The Wedding Date" is that within about the first 5 minutes you can guess where this will all end and so ends up being a case of can they make the journey from start to finish in anyway clever, interesting, romantic or funny. Well the chances are you will smile a few times but I doubt you will feel like you have watched anything new, interesting or even clever let alone romantic. Quite honestly "The Wedding Date" comes across as a mismatch of other movies, it's a little bit "Four Weddings and a Funeral", a bit "Pretty Woman" and if it wasn't for the fact it came later a little bit "Picture Perfect". There really is little if anything which feels unique, original or unpredictable.

Probably the biggest issue is that "The Wedding Date" is neither overly romantic nor funny. It lacks those scenes which makes you go all mushy, that make you champion those in the evolving relationship as it appears to be heading towards disaster. It just doesn't work on the romantic front and the same for the comedy. Scenes which are there to make you laugh are just too choreographed, the drunken hen night, the dance lesson or the awkward situations in the bedroom it really doesn't push the comedy factor to much more than a smile. It's a case of the supposedly humorous misadventures are misadventures on the director's part.

What makes "The Wedding Date" at least a little entertaining is the performances of it's main stars Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney, although the chemistry between them is seriously lacking. Debra Messing as Kat is typically cute, likeable, a little bit vulnerable but more importantly finds the right blend of bringing just enough of her character Grace from TV sitcom "Will & Grace" to the movie so that it will appeal to her fans but also making it different enough so it doesn't feel like a copy of it. Whilst Dermot Mulroney does his best Cary Grant impression cool, calm, suave but doesn't quite have the charisma to pull it off. The trouble is that his character is so under written that it all feels a little 2 dimensional. But the biggest issue is that is no chemistry between Messing and Mulroney, it just doesn't work.

As for the rest of the cast well they don't fair that much better and their characters feel mainly like caricatures of those in other movies. Amy Adams as Kat's sister Amy is just over the top annoying, the spoilt centre of attention who does nothing other than grate on your nerves in ever scene. Whilst Jack Davenport plays the bumbling toff and Sarah Parish plays the desperate single friend which between them gives this a bit of a "Four Weddings and a Funeral" feel. Then there is Jeremy Sheffield better known for his role in "Holby" is basically wasted in a role which should have been more prominent as the ex.

What this all boils down to is that whilst "The Wedding Date" will make you smile it is unlikely to deliver much else. With a storyline and characters which feel like they have been cherry picked from various other movies there is very little which feels original about this movie. But the biggest issue that as a romcom it is neither overly romantic nor funny. It is what it is, a very run of the mill movie which is not overly memorable or as good as many other romcoms.