There's something really wrong with The Wedding Date, but it's hard to say whether it's the execrable script or the putrid filmmaking.
Debra Messing stars as Kat, a bright young thing living in New York. Her stepsister is getting married in London, England, and Kat needs a date for the event. The best man, alas, is the guy who dumped Kat instead of marrying her a few years back. Still single, Kat doesn't want to go solo to the wedding. She hires a male escort she hopes will impress her family and her ex-fiance. Much is made of how much this escort costs.
Kat and her new friend Nick the male escort (Dermot Mulroney) fly to England. That seems to take a very long time. Then they take part in all the pre-wedding parties. Nick impresses everyone favourably. The former fiance, Jeffrey, seems like a weed. Kat makes sure to kiss Nick in front of Jeffrey whenever she can. If you were in Grade 5, you might find all this very thrilling.
When Nick gets out of the shower, naked, Kat has to turn her face away and giggle, once the obligatory large penis double entendres have been delivered. At this point, out of acute boredom, you might begin to wonder why everyone in the film is so cruelly made up, lit and shot. You might wonder why Kat's icky character was written to have the intellect and sophistication of a 10-year-old girl. You watch the men and women play cricket. You see the women at a hen party. You wonder why Messing has no chemistry with anyone else in the movie. You question why the movie makes no sense. You ponder the purpose of a dopey plot twist.
You are forced to listen to dialogue like this:
"If you go back, you can spend the rest of your life having great make-up sex." Or, "I'd rather be here arguing with you than having sex with anyone else."
You wonder if the filmmakers intended you to utterly despise everyone in the story. Probably not.
The movie is almost bad enough to be good, in that perverse, Showgirls kind of way, but not quite. For one thing, Dermot Mulroney is always good, and he's good here, as are Sarah Parish, Holland Taylor and a couple of other actors in tiny roles. Otherwise, this is one big mess. The movie is based upon a novel called Asking For Trouble by Elizabeth Young, which we mention specifically so you'll know what not to be reading.
Actually, that's not fair -- the novel might be very different from the film. Let's hope so, anyway.
(This film is rated PG.)
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