Charity's Place

THE WEDDING DATE

REVIEWED BY STEPHANIE VALE

Our rating: 2 out of 5

Because of: sexual content

Rated:

The whole premise of The Wedding Date is all wrong. Sure, it’s a romantic comedy, sure, it’s a wannabe-cute film, sure, it had its funny moments, but the movie is based on a huge web of deceit.

Kat Ellis (Debra Messing) has been unceremoniously dumped by her then-fiancé Jeffrey (Jeremy Sheffield). Heartbroken and crushed, she attempts to move on with her life, fleeing to New York City. Now she must return to her family home in London for her sister Amy (Amy Adams) and Edward’s (Jack Davenport) posh wedding. Single Kat decides she can’t face the deserting Jeffrey all alone, so she cashes money out of her 401k to hire a male escort to travel with her: and not just any escort, she uses her connections over at the New York Times to find and hire the “anonymous” man behind the article she read that says “every woman has the exact love life she wants.” The man is Nick Mercer (Dermot Mulroney), THE top male escort, the best in the business. He agrees to come: for $6,000 he will spend the weekend with her in London, pretending to be her new flame, as she does her best to make her ex jealous and get him back. And so it begins.

When Kat and Nick show up at the pre-wedding celebration party in London, they are immediately barraged by “good wishes” from Kat’s nosy family; a hub-bub of well wishers mingle around the expensive flat. Kat’s ex-fiance and Edward’s best friend and best man Jeffrey is lurking in the background, looking unhappy: in an unguarded moment on the porch, he confesses to Nick that he is “in love” and miserable because she can’t be his. In the meantime, Kat swings back and forth between hating Jeff and wanting him to be miserable, and wishing she could have him back. All the while, male escort Nick seems to be everything he’s claimed to be and “worth every penny." He makes Kat feel good about herself and impresses both Kat’s family and friends with his suave goodness and heart of gold.

Over the course of the film, we find that Nick has never “done” a wedding before: just as Kat has never “done” a male escort before. He agreed to come when he heard a special quality in her voice as she asked him. "Desperation?” Kat asks. "Hope,” Nick replies. As time goes on Kat seems to get more and more confused about her love life, and has trouble deciding whether she really wants Jeff or Nick. Will this story end happily ever after? And if/when it does, will anybody in the audience still care? The content could be worse, but it's pretty bad. There's affair amount of swearing, including British profanities (as the story takes place almost entirely in London: one of its most redeeming features), some fist fighting, bachelor and bachelorette parties with raunchy partying, drinking, dancing and stripping (nothing much shown). Combine all that with a bunch of fooling around, a somewhat graphic sex scene, and a plot twist that leaves you sad and angry, and you’ve got your film.

What follows is a mish-mesh of romantic comedy-drama wannabe: a free-for-all that leaves you wishing you had stayed home and stuck in My Best Friend’s Wedding for the tenth time instead. The plot to this story just ended up leaving too much to conjecture, too many unanswered questions, too much assumption, without the facts. The only redeeming quality is how much you like and feel sorry for Kat, and how you keep wishing she’ll get her Prince Charming in the end: if indeed either one of these guys is Prince Charming ... a male prostitute or a deserting fiancé are certainly not my cup of tea.