I’d like to say this is a film made by a guy who tried to recreate Four Weddings and a Funeral from flawed memory, but that’s not quite right…this film feels like the final project by a grade C student in a college class labeled “Romantic Movie Insights: Four Weddings and Funeral”– i.e. like it was made by somebody who more-or-less got the gist and appeal of the subject while badly misunderstanding the finer details.
Neither stranger to romance nor Mockingjays, Sam Clafin has the Hugh Grant role of “nice guy who can’t figure out how not to blow it.” The object of attraction for Jack (Clafin) is Dina (Olivia Munn), a woman who is equally as gorgeous as Olivia Munn with the added benefit of being exciting; she’s a war correspondent – not unlike Rosamund Pike in A Private War – well, except for the fact that Dina never stops looking like an international supermodel, which tends to spoil the illusion. The film opens with Jack about to open up to Dina in a classic movie setting (a public fountain in small-town Italy) when he is lip-blocked/cock-blocked by a long lost “friend” –what were the freaking odds?
Unable to recover the moment, Jack will have to wait until his next chance meeting to shoot an arrow into that moving heart target and collect the Dina prize up there on the top shelf. Their next meeting: three years later at the wedding of Jack’s sister, Hayley (Eleanor Tomlinson). Can he wait? Can she wait? Will she remember? Will he remember? Well, of course he remembers; it was like two seconds ago in movie time.
So there’s your classic romance premise: boy likes girl, girl likes boy, but their lives can’t be compatible until they communicate and for some unknown reason they have failed to do so in three full years. However, this is not only a romance, but a comic romance, so there are, of course, more impediments to Jack’s eventual bliss, aren’t there? These include Hayley’s uninvited ex-boyfriend, Marc, determined to ruin the wedding, the maid-of-honor who is not a maid and doesn’t realize he has to give a speech, the guest appearance of a noteworthy Italian director who might have designs on Dina, the boor who showed up in a kilt for no reason, Jack’s ex-girlfriend who split with Jack on ugly terms, Jack’s ex-girlfriend’s current boyfriend who cannot stop talking about the girth of his own penis. It’s so obvious this film was intended to play out like a Richard Curtis film that I almost feel sorry for it. Why, you could almost cast it based on the roles pre-written years ago: “Oh yeah, that’s Rhys Ifans, that’s Rowan Atkinson …”
Love Wedding Repeat certainly sounds cute and likable… and who can’t get behind Sam Clafin or Olivia Munn as romantic leads? Here’s the problem: this looks like a Richard Curtis project; it feels like a Richard Curtis project; it even plays like a Richard Curtis project … but it doesn’t work. The humor badly misjudges scene and players again and again and again, which would be fine if the humor were inconsequential, but it isn’t. Let me demonstrate – Hayley has asked Jack to keep Marc from ruining the wedding –ok, fine, and this complicates Jack’s ability to romance Dina. Hayley asks Jack to spike Marc’s champagne with a sleeping agent. Problematic … and the word “roofie” comes up, which should never happen in a comedy. Then random kids switch all the nametags around at their table and by the time guests sit for the reception, Jack ends up inadvertently taking the agent himself. Shortly thereafter, Jack finally gets alone time with Dina. He gets her to open up about a personal anguish (strictly contrasting the boor who wooed Dina by talking about himself), but then sleeps through Dina’s tale of heartache. In one scene, the film effectively crushed itself. The humor here isn’t funny in the least and anyone who sleeps through a woman bearing her soul –without her knowing he’d been drugged- would never get another chance with her. Were this an isolated incident, I could almost forgive Love Wedding Repeat. It wasn’t. This was a C-student making a Richard Curtis film and it doesn’t work.
Try to emulate Richard Curtis you might
Remake his romance, but not quite
Don’t shoot for Four
I’ll show you the door
When you can’t even get the first wedding right
Rated TV-MA, 100 Minutes
Director: Dean Craig
Writer: Dean Craig
Genre: “I saw a Richard Curtis film and thought I could make one”
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Dean Craig
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Richard Curtis
