The Wedding Date
Studio: Universal Studios. Year: 2005 US Rating: PG-13 - Sexual Content and Language Film Length: 90 minutes Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Video Resolution/Codec: 1080p/VC-1 Audio: English 5.1 Dolby Plus Subtitles: Optional English SDH |
US Release Date: July 10, 2007
The Film -
out of
The Film -
out of “My sister's getting married and the best man is my ex. In case I chicken out, I want to know where all the exits are."
Kat Ellis is a mess. Her little sister is getting married in England and the best man will be Jeffrey, Kat’s ex-fiancé who inexplicably cancelled their wedding at the last moment years earlier. Kat is still pining over the man who broke her heart and the thought of heading back to England to see him, and everyone else, is less than enticing.
Kat decides to find herself a date for the wedding in the Yellow Pages, a handsome, hunky dial-a-date called Nick, whom she has hired to save her from the embarrassment of heading home to her friends and family a lonely single woman living in New York. More importantly, however, it will hopefully drive her ex-fiancé mad with jealousy.
The antics ensue as soon as her plane touches the ground, with the nervous and clumsy Kat trying to pull herself through the awkwardness of being amongst the wedding atmosphere, the man she still loves while in the company of a suave, confident date that she only just met.
Debra Messing plays the young, beautiful Kat, riddled with emotional pandemonium, who decides to perpetrate a falsehood on everyone she knows, including herself, to save face when she shows up for her younger sisters wedding. She has a subtle warmth about her, and the unflattering disarray she exhibits as a good source of her charm and likeability. Her date for hire, Nick, is played by the affable Dermot Mulroney. He is believable as the male escort; attractive, confident and witty. The rest of the cast is pretty good, from the morally questionable Jeffrey (Jeremy Sheffield), the groom-to-be Edward (Jack Davenport of BBC’s Coupling), the spoiled little sister Amy (Amy Adams) and the parents (Peter Egan and Holland Taylor). But this is a film about how Kat and her date try to keep up a charade all the while, unknowingly building an intimacy and closeness between themselves.
The English setting for The Wedding Date, quite possibly inspired by films like Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral, serves the quaintness of the films tone and romantic lure successfully.
With rare exception, romantic comedies are predicated on a falsehood, a lie or a secret that seems to be gotten away with until the inevitable happens and it jeopardizes any happy ending we may have been promised or otherwise had hoped for the onscreen lovers. The Wedding Date has more than one of those lies, and while I don’t really care for the flippancy with which seemingly good, sensible people invest themselves in the lies, the twists from the revelation of secrets that this film provides does make the story more interesting.
The Wedding Date is a vehicle for Debra Messing albeit a predictable and unoriginal one. The film relies upon that predictability to help it deliver a theatre full of smiles by the time the credits role – but it is a less than subtle reminder that the romantic comedy genre has fallen into a rut that it appears incapable of escaping. Sugary and simple formulaic tripe, parading itself as charming, funny and genuine has gotten old and in so many films in the genre, the filmmakers assume either that the audience is duller than most and won’t notice or that they are happy to buy into the millionth remake of the same by-the-numbers falling in love tale and won’t care.
Having said all that, I begrudgingly relinquish my soapbox and say, that for all of its ‘run of the mill’ flaws, I rather enjoyed this film. Perhaps that’s the problem. While yearning for something new from the genre is a worthy pursuit, it won’t come as long as the world seems to enjoy what is being pumped out today. Perhaps it was the wonderful English setting, the simplicity of the set-up or the leading couple’s chemistry, conflict and coming together that pleased me most, but regardless, I found The Wedding Date to be a nice time.
The Video - out of
out of The Wedding Date is provided in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 in 1080p and VC-1 encoded. The image suffers from quite a bit of unnatural grain and softness, worse than your typical romantic comedy with the New York scenes at the beginning suffering the most. There is some nice clarity to be found, also, especially closer to the end of the film. Universal has provided this recent catalogue release with an extremely average picture quality.
The Sound - out of
out of The only audio option available is the English Dolby Digital 5.1 track. It is a crisp audio track that comes through very clean. The sweet musical score by Blake Neely warms the speakers and some of the great songs chosen for the soundtrack come across well. There isn’t much that is outstanding about the audio, in terms of reference quality, but rarely is there a film from this genre that will give you that. For the context of the film and story, the audio is perfectly suited.
The Extra’s - out of
out of Audio Commentary by Debra Messing – Messing provides her commentary from the actor’s perspective on the making of the film, the choices that go into how to perform in the scene and comments on the intent of the tone in certain scenes, but there are vast stretches of silence that hardly makes for an engrossing listen. Not a particularly strong audio commentary track.
A Date With Debbie – (7:41) – This brief conversation with Debra Messing has her recalling getting the script, acting with her co-star Dermot Mulroney and her thoughts on the character she played. She comes across as quite genuine and for a fluff extra, this was simple enough to be enjoyed.
Deleted Scenes – (10:03) – Eight deleted scenes in all, many short and a few excised pieces from scenes that remained in the final version. The film is short enough and these deleted scenes good enough that they could easily have remained and been just fine.
Final Thoughts
With the High Definition roll out well underway, it is interesting timing for Universal to release a cute little romantic comedy. The male dominated ‘early adopter’ field, happily soaking up testosterone fueled, visual effects laden Hollywood pulp may have reached critical mass by now. This means that any film that the early adopter can pick up for the ‘other half’ would be well timed to appease them for the wallet-draining ‘must-have’ habit that may very well have gone on unabated so far. This date movie was a pretty good choice.
I am not sure why a film whose running time is about 85 minutes took four producers and four executive producers but the end product is a nice movie. With a distinctly English flavor, some good lines and a few very funny peripheral characters (the lightning rod cousin, TJ is a standout), The Wedding Date has enough cuteness, enough romance and enough comedy to make date night a success.
Overall Score - 
out of
out of Neil Middlemiss
Kernersville, NC
