Ever since 'Four Weddings And A Funeral', they've been strip-mining weddings for material......in a never ending pageant of dysfunctional bridal parties, heavy drinking, awkward romances, both unrequited and the other kind.......and cake ending up in every possible place except in people's mouths......
This one strains mightily to stand out from the pack, kicking off with with a brief trip to the Cosmos, narrated by some woman who does a damn good Dame Judi Dench impersonation. Sooner or later, faux-Judi intones, all romantic plans will go down the crapper........
To prove that theory, we have a carload of wedding guests at a sumptuous Rome reception , including the the bride herself, in various stages of desperation, panic and overall love-sickness.....
The bride's brother (Sam Claflin) sees a golden opportunity to re-connect with the Girl Who Got Away, a beautiful war journalist (Olivia Munn).......
The bride (Elenor Tomlinson) panics at the sight of her coke-addled ex (Jack Farthing) crashing the reception in an effort to win her back. She enlists her brother to drug his champagne before the doped-up doofus publicly reveals he boffed the bride only 3 weeks before the wedding.......which won't sit well with her spiffy new Italian hubby.
And if you can't figure how how this is going to go, you're suffering from acute' rom-com deprivation......cue the so-called hilarity.
Adding to the general chaos, slapstick and ever-growing pile of dick jokes,.... Clalfin's best bud ( Joel Fry), an idiot actor hoping to butter up a famed film director who's also a wedding guest.......Claflin's caustic, bitchy ex (Frida Pinto), toting around her latest boytoy (Alan Mustafa) who's terminally afflicted with enraged penis envy........and a woebegone dateless single (Tim Key), a
non-Scottish dork wearing a kilt that makes him itch his balls at all the most inappropriate moments.....
What could possibly go wrong......heh, heh......
After everything predictably does go wrong for almost everybody, the movie pulls out its great big Twist-o-roony..........by restarting the entire story, alternate-universe style.........with almost the same stuff happening, except to different people.......with decidedly different outcomes.......
Clever, no?
Nah, not really.......if you consider that the second half alternate universe version isn't anywhere near as funny as the first half's........and that the first half wasn't all that funny to begin with.
The cast almost saves it even though the script gives them little to work with but grimacing, sweating and looking humiliated. Claflin, Munn, Tomlinson and Pinto possess superb comic timing and they sweat bullets to wring a few laughs of out the proceedings.
We only wish this movie didn't force them to work so hard......1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2)
Don't invite yourself to these nuptials, stick with the original 'Four Weddings'.....or 'My Best Friend's Wedding' .......or maybe even that famous wedding from 'Game Of Thrones'..........
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