I SWEAR I WAS FORCED TO SEE THIS MOVIE

By: B -- 2/6/05

I’m going to make this review of The Wedding Date short for two reasons: I’ve already forgotten most of it, and I don’t want to waste your time. However I do think this review is necessary, because hopefully your 90 seconds spent reading this will save you the 90 minutes required to sit through this uneventful romantic comedy.

Afraid to face her judgmental family when she visits for her younger sister’s wedding, Kat (Debra Messing) desperately orders a date from an escort service. That escort ends up being Nick (Dermot Mulroney), and he’s handsome and charming, and the whole family adores him, and Kat reluctantly ends up adoring him as well, and one thing leads to another, and… you get the picture. Romantic Comedy 101 -- no more, no less. Let’s quickly break it down.

The good: Debra Messing’s understated performance and the beautiful London scenery.

The bad: Dermot Mulroney’s detached performance (he has the personality of Billy from Melrose Place), the absence of justification for Kat and Nick’s eventual attraction to one another, the dogged adherence to the genre’s formula.

The ugly: the editing. This was hands down the worst editing I’ve ever seen in a film, and I rarely notice such particulars. The wrong jokes are emphasized, the few clever one-liners are mishandled, the storyline is choppy and confusing, and unnecessary scenes go on too long. The entire film felt pieced together by a drunken film student.

The forgettable: everything else. Short on romance, short on comedy, devoid of uniqueness, The Wedding Date is expectedly another unremarkable chick flick.

POP RATING: 5

CRITICAL RATING: 4

B'S RATING: 4.5

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