The Wedding Planner is not the type of movie that deserves a Special Edition release on DVD, and Columbia-Tristar has definitely agreed. The Wedding Planner DVD is not necessarily a bare bones edition, but it still falls short of potential. Before I get into the disc, here is a brief synopsis of the film, provided by Columbia-Tristar…

Synopsis

“Mary Fiore (Lopez) is the wedding planner. She’s ambitious, hard-working, extremely organized, and she knows exactly what to do and say to make any wedding a spectacular event. But when Mary falls (literally) for a handsome doctor (McConaughey), her busy yet uncomplicated life is turned upside down - he’s the groom in the biggest wedding of her career!

Will she help him walk down the aisle with his Internet tycoon girlfriend (Wilson-Sampras), or will Mary finally get to be the bride herself? As this sweet romantic comedy proves, when it comes to love, you can never plan what’s going to happen.”

Audio

This disc features basic Dolby (2.0) and Dolby Digital (5.1) soundtracks, which is all that is needed for a romantic comedy as such. Even though a DTS or EX track would be asking a little much for The Wedding Planner, I feel that a French and/or Spanish dubbed tracked would have been a nice addition. The Dolby Digital soundtrack does not envelope the listen with a brilliant soundstage, but it does its job in providing an effective soundtrack for the film. Really, how much can we expect from the surrounds with a movie like this?

Video

Surprisingly, the video on this DVD was really good. The film transfer is quite nice; there was very good coloration, and no noticeable pixilation or granulation. The transfer is a nice anamorphic widescreen presentation (2.35:1), and the unnecessary full frame aspect was gladly (from my point of view) ignored.

Features

As I ranted earlier, I can’t understand why there are any discs produced that don’t feature animated menus. I feel as though it takes away from the whole DVD experience. This discs menus are really easy to navigate and theme related, but motionless. Other than the lack of animation, the special features are pretty good on the disc. The disc features a director and writer’s commentary which takes you into the minds of those who made the film. I would have loved to have heard a commentary track including Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey, but I was happy enough to a commentary track at all.

The two featurette’s are not too juicy. The making of featurette is more like a trailer w/ commentary. It has a few blurbs from the actors, and explains the plot. The dancer and the cowboy featurette is a short piece on two scenes on the film… a dancing scene and a horseback riding scene (go figure!). It explains and documents the challenges that Matthew McConaughey had with his dancing sequence, and the difficulties that Jennifer Lopez had with her horseback riding scene. Both featurette’s were both quite unnecessary, but I suppose they are added value.

I love when DVD’s include a section for deleted scenes. You can see why most scenes were cut, and on occasion, you get a glimpse of a great scene that should have been included. This disc is no exception. The collection of deleted scenes had some hits and some misses. One interesting inclusion to this list of deleted scenes was a scene called “I can’t stop smiling.” This was an interesting inclusion for the fact that this scene was not deleted, but included in the final cut of the film. A nice touch also is the inclusion of optional director’s commentary for why the scenes were deleted.

Lastly, this disc includes a few of the special features that we have started to expect from all releases… filmographies, web links, production notes, and trailers. In regards to the trailers section of this disc, in addition to the trailer for The Wedding Planner, Columbia-Tristar has also included the trailers for My Best Friends Wedding, U-Turn, and Anaconda.

Closing Thoughts

This disc did not knock me off my feet, but held its own considering the film. As I stated before, this film did not deserve a Special Edition release, but Columbia-Tristar still could have none much more to spice up this DVD. With all of the advances that we have recently seen in regards to the DVD format, there are a few things that I have come to expect from even a non-SE version of a film, such as animated menus and multiple audio tracks, both of which this disc are lacking.

Overall, I was happy with The Wedding Planner DVD. The movie was cute (but definitely not great), and the disc held its own. When I first put the disc in my player, I was far from impressed. But after sorting through the content, I came to realize that there was some nice added content, especially for a non-SE release. The picture quality was better than I expected, and the sound was as good as can be expected from a romantic-comedy. Special features were nice to see, but where were the animated menus???