UK Edition
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Screenwriters: Michael Ian Black
Starring: Jason Biggs, Isla Fisher, Joe Pantoliano, Joanna Gleason, Edward Herrmann, Margo Martindale, Michael Weston
Running time: 90 mins
Certificate: 15
Does the world really need another wedding-based romantic comedy? Over the past decade we’ve had – and, to varying degrees, enjoyed - Wedding Crashers, American Wedding, Runaway Bride, The Wedding Planner and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Is it possible to squeeze any more humour out of nuptials, nookie and loveable no-hopers who beat the odds to get the girl? Whatever, Wedding Daze is determined to give this dead horse one hell of a flogging.
Anderson (Biggs) is an idle waster who received the worst possible response when he proposed to his long-term girlfriend: she died on the spot. Twelve months later, he’s still moping about in his trackies reliving the moment when romance turned into an aneurysm. His best friend (Weston) persuades him to give love another chance, so he proposes to the first girl he locks eyes with, a flame-haired waitress at the local diner. To his surprise, Katie (Fisher) says yes. She moves in with him and they begin the unenviable task of meeting each other’s friends and family. Will romance blossom in the unlikeliest of circumstances or is Anderson due a harsh reality check?
Wedding Daze is a film that could teach Joss “Big Love” Stone a thing or two about having an identity crisis. It tries its hand at broad comedy (blocked toilets, women who turn out to be fat rather than pregnant – tee hee hee), American Pie-style smut (some very randy in-laws) and kooky ethnic comedy (swipes at circus performers and Jewish people), but fails on every count. It seems to think that combining American Pie’s Biggs and Wedding Crashers’s Fisher is a recipe for surefire comic gold. It’s not. An hour in the film runs out of ideas and becomes a half-arsed, directionless road movie. Its inability to decide what it wants to be – not to mention the palpable sense of desperation that creeps into the final minutes - betrays the director’s inexperience: Michael Ian Black is a first-time film-maker who tries anything to stop this soufflé from sinking.
If only he’d worked harder to source the right ingredients. Katie and Anderson are utterly unconvincing as a couple: for most of the film they don’t even seem to like each other, which, seeing as neither character is blessed with any more charm than the average STD, is entirely understandable. The film can’t even rely on its peripheral characters for support because every single one of them is as stale and cliché-ridden as a Mills & Boon novel. The gay policeman who brightens up his station with "faaabulous" pot plants is particularly depressing. Ultimately, the juiciest morsel that Wedding Daze offers us is a fun guessing game: what on earth has happened to Joanna ‘The West Wing’ Gleason’s face. Our guess? Someone’s been in touch with Cher’s, ahem, dermatologist recently.
The kindest thing we could say about Wedding Daze? It’s two decent sketches hidden inside a 90-minute movie.
