My standards for comedy are so low that I can't think of one I didn't enjoy. Therefore, it is doubly damning that I found this film tedious and unfunny. I guess if you are a 12-year-old infatuated with Yuppies these cut-outs might stimulate your imagination. But basically none of the characters light up.
At fault is the failure to provide the little touches that make us identify. Now, with the main character, the film starts by pointing out he lost his ability to write at just the moment he received his first advance ($50k). That's something but apparently the only upshot of that fact is he fears to write a short speech as best man in his friend's wedding. What promised to be a key insight into the character is dropped. The rest of the film is the tormented posturing of Yuppie types fulfilling various roles in a forthcoming wedding.
With this misfire at character building, he blends in with all the other males who have no defining traits and all look equally out of a clothing catalog.
Yet all the males seem intimately involved with each other and their male networking, even though none of them should have much to interest anyone, so that I began to explain it to myself as if they were a group of Gay men who somehow lucked into roles as participants in a wedding. In fact, if this had been the premise, the film would have coalesced a little better. As for the women, apart from a formal glamor they too had little to interest anyone. And all chemistry between the opposite sexes seems missing.
But there were two incidents at variance with this. One is his life with his female employer who is very dissatisfied with his employment. It happens that he discovers she is only feigning to be a married woman and this discovery suddenly empowers him as a man. But then the scene cuts without telling us whether they made hay while the sun shined. In a similar incident, a female discovers his ruthless gambits to break up his friend's wedding and she is similarly empowered. Again a hint of lust, this time from her. And a scene cut.
It is as if the film is compulsively drawn away from life and towards the purely manneristic involvement in the wedding planning.
As the film progresses, it is merely tedious and when some slapstick scenes arrive I was already so anesthetized I felt as if I were seeing it through a psychiatric haze. Finally, he realizes he should be the groom. But no exuberance is actually conveyed to the audience. It doesn't make up for the leaden film we have endured. A late scene during the "action packed" denouement features a brief shot of him jet-skiing across the Thames before the London Bridge, a bit of American vulgarity in a film with phony British accents. Conventionally, there would have been at least enough of this footage to give a feeling of exhilaration in the audacious flight over water. This too was poorly done.
Give me back my money.
At fault is the failure to provide the little touches that make us identify. Now, with the main character, the film starts by pointing out he lost his ability to write at just the moment he received his first advance ($50k). That's something but apparently the only upshot of that fact is he fears to write a short speech as best man in his friend's wedding. What promised to be a key insight into the character is dropped. The rest of the film is the tormented posturing of Yuppie types fulfilling various roles in a forthcoming wedding.
With this misfire at character building, he blends in with all the other males who have no defining traits and all look equally out of a clothing catalog.
Yet all the males seem intimately involved with each other and their male networking, even though none of them should have much to interest anyone, so that I began to explain it to myself as if they were a group of Gay men who somehow lucked into roles as participants in a wedding. In fact, if this had been the premise, the film would have coalesced a little better. As for the women, apart from a formal glamor they too had little to interest anyone. And all chemistry between the opposite sexes seems missing.
But there were two incidents at variance with this. One is his life with his female employer who is very dissatisfied with his employment. It happens that he discovers she is only feigning to be a married woman and this discovery suddenly empowers him as a man. But then the scene cuts without telling us whether they made hay while the sun shined. In a similar incident, a female discovers his ruthless gambits to break up his friend's wedding and she is similarly empowered. Again a hint of lust, this time from her. And a scene cut.
It is as if the film is compulsively drawn away from life and towards the purely manneristic involvement in the wedding planning.
As the film progresses, it is merely tedious and when some slapstick scenes arrive I was already so anesthetized I felt as if I were seeing it through a psychiatric haze. Finally, he realizes he should be the groom. But no exuberance is actually conveyed to the audience. It doesn't make up for the leaden film we have endured. A late scene during the "action packed" denouement features a brief shot of him jet-skiing across the Thames before the London Bridge, a bit of American vulgarity in a film with phony British accents. Conventionally, there would have been at least enough of this footage to give a feeling of exhilaration in the audacious flight over water. This too was poorly done.
Give me back my money.