Sunday 5 September 2010

No.166 : Wedding Daze (2006)



Sometimes the clue to a film’s quality can be found in its title and given Wedding Daze’s pishy pun offering you can be assured that you won’t overawed by the quality on show. But let’s not jump to conclusions, let’s look at the content and production values and then declare it a pile of crap.

Pie shagger Jason Biggs is all excited as he’s about to propose to his girlfriend in a home made cupid costume. His friend, the private eye guy in ‘House’ tries to dissuade him to no avail. We the viewer know the relationship won’t work as the girlfriend is flirting with the Spanish waiter but when she conveniently drops dead of heart failure all bets are off.

We skip forward a year and rather get counselling and stuff he’s been sitting about in his flat, presumably boning baked goods. His long suffering friend persuades him to go to the diner and for no explicable reason he proposes to the waitress Isla Fisher. As he asks the question we see her life in flashback and learn that her douche bag boy friend proposed the night before. For other reasons unknown she accepts and the unlikely premises is off and not quite running.

The mismatched pair then go through a few dull trials as they meet each other’s parents and encounter a few bumps in the road. His parents are sex mad swingers who seem a bit creepy and her mother has a new Jewish husband and an ex in prison in the shape of Joe Pantoliano.

After an extremely long middle section where the ‘will they, won’t they’ trundles along before they eventually do. As you’d expect Joe breaks out of jail and soon the whole party is on the run with some hapless cops on their trail. I can guarantee you won’t care by the end but just to hammer it home how pointless the whole thing is we get the treat of an extended ‘what they did next’ montage.

Despite a half decent cast this a real charmless stinker that’ll have you fast forwarding before the end on the off chance that Isla gets down to her skimpies for the finale. The rest of the film tries to be a bit edgy with snotters and riske sexy practices sprinkled about to offer something for the lads in a genre that rightly has ‘chick flick’ written all over it.

Part of the problem is that the central premise is so feeble; he’s an emotional wreck and she’s patently mental so where is our investment in them getting together? That allied with the zero chemistry between the leads makes for an awkward 100 minutes as they bumble around to the general apathy of the audience.

The big finale, which goes on for half an hour is a real shocker with the ass hole boyfriend inexplicably becoming gay and the straight-laced Mom going back to the jail bird ex. For a romantic comedy to be so lacking in comedy and romance is a rare feat but one executed here with some aplomb.

Best Bit : Isla’s Black bra an boy pants combo 'W' Rating 10/23