The Wedding Date (2005)
The marketing for this film tries
to sell it as a romantic comedy but this film really
isn't funny. In fact, it's barely a film. But filmmaker
Clare Kilner is wise enough to cast two leads who
help salvage this ridiculous and pedestrian script
by Dana Fox (based on what must be a fairly silly
novel by Elisabeth Young called "Asking for Trouble").
Without TV's "Grace" Debra Messing and ruggedly handsome
Dermot Mulroney (once again using that little scar
on his lip to charm the pants off of us) in the frame,
this film would flop onto the screen like warm dung
on a barn floor.
Messing is cast as Kat, a watered-down,
slightly less neurotic and utterly less amusing version
of her TV persona. Kat is a customer service agent
for an airline (for no real apparent reason) and she
is going to London for her sister's wedding. Why is
the wedding in England? Again, there is really absolutely
no reason at all for this. Grace, I mean Kat, wanting
to stick it to her ex, who is also the best man at
the wedding, hires Nick, played by Mulroney to be
her escort to the affair. Nick is apparently a male
prostitute and the film is going for a reverse "Pretty
Woman" plot that is so ridiculous as to almost seem
a good idea. It's not. Julia Roberts was a whore with
a heart of gold in that film and Mulroney, as Nick
here, is apparently a gigolo who is so attune to all
women's real emotional needs and wants that he can
determine their psychosexual problems simply by sniffing
their money as it comes out of an ATM.
Anyway, everything here is pretty
typical and the film is lensed so poorly by Kilner
that there is almost nothing to compliment about the
proceedings. We know we're in big trouble when the
stalwart Holland Taylor has absolutely no opportunities
to help make the film fun or quirky. This is pretty
bland and disinteresting stuff except when Messing
flutters her eyelashes or Mulroney smiles his crooked
smile. Most of the time though watching the film is
like sitting in a tub of tepid bathwater. It's not
horrible but after a while you just want to get out.
Notes:
The film was called "Something Borrowed"
when in production.
The music of Air Supply is used
for a joke a couple times in the film.
Filmed in London.
Viewed in Austin on President's
Day in February of 2005.
