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Wedding Daze
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| Year: |
2006
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Director: |
Michael Ian Black
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| Stars: |
Jason Biggs, Isla Fisher, Michael Weston, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joe Pantoliano, Heather Goldenhersh, Joanna Gleason, Edward Herrmann, Margo Martindale, Mark Consuelos, Audra Blaser, Matt Molloy, Rob Corddry, Jay O. Sanders, Chris Diamantopoulos
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| Genre: |
Comedy, Romance |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
He had it all planned out so well. Anderson (Jason Biggs) had been to a ladies department store to pick something out for his girlfriend, or rather, for him to wear for his girlfriend, and that night had ventured along to his date with her dressed as Cupid, complete with wings and bow and arrow. His best friend, Ted (Michael Weston), was there as well, trying desperately to talk him out of the stunt, and to make matters worse, the girl, Vanessa (Audra Blaser) was being captivated by one of the waiters inside the restaurant. The worst was yet to come as Anderson made his entrance...
It's not often you get a romantic comedy beginning with the male half of the couple killing the female half, but that is what happened with Wedding Daze, whose first big gag is that Anderson's appearance and marriage proposal is such a shock to Vanessa that she keels over of a heart attack and dies. But then, not every romantic comedy was written and directed by Michael Ian Black, one of the brains behind such cult comedy classics as The State and Stella on television, and Wet Hot American Summer in the movies, so his edgy but daft sense of humour showed through in every item of humour this contained.
Alas, Wedding Daze (one of three titles this was advertised as) did not clean up at the box office, being too outlandish for the romcom set and too romantic for the outrageous comedy set, falling as it did between two stools. However, there were a few fans who were happy with its inability to make up its mind which side of the fence it wanted to land on, because they were tired of movies that plumped for one style and were far too safe in that chosen area, and besides, here was a film that recognised that many of the characters in heartwarming, luvvy-duvvy light entertainment were actually acting as if they were utterly insane. Which was precisely how they acted in this.
The premise was simple: after a year of pathetically mourning his lost girlfriend, Anderson is persuaded to take a chance with someone else by Ted, so on the spur of the moment he asks the waitress serving them in this diner to marry him. And she says yes. Now, this is highly improbable, but just the kind of thing that happens in your average Jennifer Aniston movie, so what Black did was show that to accept this kind of set-up, you also had to accept that the participants were off their rockers. Anderson because of his loss, and the waitress because she cannot admit that she hates the thought of marrying her boyfriend William (Chris Diamantopoulos), who may be champion at charades, but has not won her heart.
By going along with this new man in her life, Katie the waitress (Isla Fisher) upsets quite a few apple carts, but that's the source of the laughter, and whatever the naysayers thought, Wedding Daze is consistently amusing, with some winning and absurd situations in its arsenal. Black assembled a fine cast of recognisables and not-so-familiar faces, who all managed to convince that these ridiculous choices they make as the plot goes ahead would be perfectly reasonable behaviour to them. So Katie's mother (Joanna Gleason) and stepfather (Matt Molloy) are none too pleased, but her real father (Joe Pantoliano) is delighted and breaks out of prison to walk his daughter down the aisle, leading to her mother falling back into lust with him, and so on. It should be too cute for words, but there's a crazed gleam in the eye of more than one character that sold it, and no more proof were needed that Fisher should have been a reigning comedy queen on the strength of performances like this. Music by Peter Nashel.
Aka: The Pleasure of Your Company
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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