The Wedding Date

Review by Clint Morris

It's always the one who makes the most noise that gets all the attention and, as Clare Kilner's The Wedding Date arrived on the scene without barely a grunt, whisper or blather of any sort, it did it's best Harold Holt and vanished faster than a dollar note on a cement conduit.

Granted, Date hasn't got much to say anyway. There's nothing-special going on with it, there's nothing really significant about it's appearance, and, if anything, it's merely regurgitating anothers story.

A mish-mash of My Best Friend's Wedding (funnily enough starring this film's token 'hunk' Dermot Mulroney as well), Pretty Woman and anything else embossed in the ever-redundant 'opposites attract' varnish that sells like hot cakes these days, The Wedding Date centres on a desperate young darling, Debra Messing, of 'Will and Grace' fame.

She hires an escort (Dermot Mulroney - yep, the same dude who was the ugliest of the Young Guns ensemble some fifteen years or so back - amazing what some soap and a shave can do for a career) to tag along with her to London, where her younger step-sister is getting married.

The plan is for the unfeasibly perfect Nick to make Kate's British ex-boyfriend super jealous, but, of course, the third reel's got a saw-that-coming-a-mile-away-twist in it's wing, with the escort actually falling for the woman who's paid him a sumly six grand to play the bogus boyfriend.

Unlike the films that it's trying to facsimile, Date fails in several significant areas: Firstly, there's next to no chemistry between the leads. On their own, they're quite good and aptly cast, but together, they stir up less heat than a lighter around a campfire.

The direction is rather sloppy as well. Scenes simply begin and end with no connection, not to mention there's a lack of believability seething through the surface in anything that occurs here (especially this apparent love that's blossomed between the twosome), and when the jokes on Messing's TV sitcom are funnier than the one's you've paid $15 to hear, you know a vital ingredient has been left out of the cinematic pudding.

On the other hand, there's enough hear to raise a smile, needle the odd giggle and sustain interest - just a pity there wasn't a bit more meat on the bone.

2.5 out of 5

The Wedding Date
Australian release: Thursday 26th of May, 2005
Cast: Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Holland Taylor, Jack Davenport, Jeremy Sheffield.
Director: Clare Kilner.
Website: Click here.

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