Synopsis
I would hope that with films like The Wedding Date, that the genre of films set around weddings is over and done with. There’s nothing left to mine, the horse is very dead, and in this case, the film is rather predictable. Or to put in another way, my wife said “this film will probably be stupid, but I’ll like it”. And when I was watching parts of the film, the story was so easy to follow that I could go and make a batch of chili, come back, and be caught up to the story.
Based on … book(?) by Elizabeth Young and directed by Clare Kilner (How to Deal), Kat (Debra Messing, Will and Grace) has a younger sister (played by Amy Adams, Catch Me If You Can) who is marrying a friend of Kat’s ex-fiancee. As it turns out, Kat wants to put the best face on this as she can, because she was essentially left at the altar. So she decides to hire a male escort named Nick (Dermot Mulroney, About Schmidt, Point of No Return), that will both be there for her and drive her ex jealous.
But a funny thing happens on the way to the wedding (which everyone has to fly to England for), and that is that Kat starts to fall in love with Nick, despite the plane ticket and $6,000 she’s given him. So the rest of the movie is spent with Kat and Nick crossing paths and mixing signals for the next 40 minutes or so. It’s something that we’ve all seen before in films like this. And aside from the TV star’s chance to smoke on-screen or throw in the occasional swear (along with a paid trip to England), this doesn’t have too much going for it in the originality department. The fact that a partially nude Mulroney appears in it, aside from appealing to the soccer mom crowd, is a testimony to how “phoned in” this production is.
All in all, there’s nothing that really is going on in the film that’s worth remembering, and I’d asked the question awhile back that if no one ever saw a film theatrically, did the film occur? The film seems to be a metaphor for me right now, which is that sometimes you’re just in it for the paycheck.
Audio
There’s a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack that doesn’t have too much surround activity going on through the movie, but the film’s soundtrack sounds very clear throughout, and it has to be, with a lot of wedding/party songs that play in large parts of the film.
Video
With a low key film of this nature, The Wedding Date comes with a 1.85:1 widescreen presentation that looks pretty good, to tell you the truth. The black levels are consistent throughout, and a noticeable film grain shows up through most of the film. It’s a much better looking film that one would normally expect.
Special Features
The good news is that Debra Messing provides a commentary on the film, but the bad news is that she does this by herself, without any accompaniment. It would have probably been more ideal to have her do this commentary with Mulroney, or even Kilner, but you take what you can get I guess. She reads a little bit more into the story than is probably there, and there are a lot of gaps in the track while she watches this, but she does an admirable job. Following this track are several deleted scenes that total about 10 minutes in length. They are in anamorphic, but there’s not much worth seeing here. “A Date with Debra” follows the star’s memories on the production for 8 glorious minutes.
Closing Thoughts
By and large, aside from The Wedding Planner, My Best Friend’s Wedding, My Big Fat Greek Wedding or Four Weddings and a Funeral, this film is merely snippets of moderately funny parts of each of these films, stretched into a 90 minute production. It’s not really worth your time.
Special Features List
- Commentary with Debra Messing
- Deleted Scenes
- “A Date with Debra”
