'The Wedding Date' - A Bouncy Insult to Women Film-makers

My journey into Rom-Com Hades is a short one so far, but I’ve seen enough of the genre to determine this movie the worst. To begin with, the movie’s premise and nauseating characters are bad enough for their insulting lack of charm or logic. Dimwit Debra Messing hires male gigolo Dermot Mulroney for $6000 to accompany her to a family wedding, but it gets worse. Do male gigolos even exist, excluding jailbait for homosexuals in sexual tourist spots in Tangiers or Thailand? Whatever. Every repellant bridesmaid, jilted ex, bumbling parent, in-law, etc. embody bug-eyed cartoons with awful clothes and mannered acting choices. Messing’s hair is the putrid color of Orange Crush. Who designed this flick, anyway? In fact, the whole movie shares one color scheme, which seems to be Flight Attendant Uniform, and this best epitomizes how the movie’s smallest details make its biggest flaws even worse. Add the rip-off locale of England (to remind audiences that, hey, “Four Weddings & a Funeral” took place there!), and it’s not enough to distract one from all the other cliché’s onscreen. Lots of Michael Buble on the soundtrack and the obligatory Motown hits to keep the honkies in the Cineplex entertained—yet without unsettling them with music that sounds too much like actual negroes—and I’m sure the studio thought they had a hit soundtrack as well. They even afforded to buy a Maroon 5 ballad to stick into the movie’s one sex scene! Lines of dialogue include, “I’d rather fight with you than make love with anyone else”, and Mulroney looks so exceedingly uncomfortable in this swill you can almost forgive him. Almost. But not once his character falls in love with Messing’s charm-less, spas of a 9 year old girl masquerading as a 20-something female (and the audience’s object of sympathy). This another failure on the script’s part, as I don’t know how any woman could identify with Messing’s creepy brat. The final insult the movie delivers: it was written, directed and produced by women. If this doesn’t set back the dignity of both sexes a century or more, I don’t know what could. Horrific.



"It looks like you could fit his future into about 6 different garbage bags." -"LHTH"