Four Weddings and A Funeral at 30
Had everything gone to the original plan, it would have been a TV movie starring Alex Jennings and Jennie Tripplehorn. Later, it was a project offered to Alan Rickman and Marisa Tomei. And even when it did eventually land its leads, there was still concern about its title – prospective United States distributors suggesting that True Love and Near Misses, Rolling in the Aisles and even Loitering in Sacred Places would be more enticing for audiences.
Director Mike Newell, Wellingtonborn screenwriter Richard Curtis and others, though, resisted such overtures, a moniker of Four Weddings and A Funeral proving no barrier to their low-budget British rom-com delighting audiences around the globe, turning leading man Hugh Grant into an overnight star, sparking renewed interest in the poems of WH Auden and unleashing a monster radio and chart-topping hit in the form of Wet Wet Wet’s cover of The Troggs’ Love Is All Around.
However, not only did it become the then highest-grossing UK film of all time, the £3 million (NZ$6.3m) movie took home US$245.7m (NZ$412m) worldwide, received two Academy Award nominations, was the first British flick to win a French Cesar and launched a wave of romantic, comedic tales with similar sensibilities.
Yes, without Four Weddings there would have been no Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Love Actually or What’s Love Got To Do With It?
But 30 years after its debut and freshly arrived back on TVNZ+, how have the humour and amour held up? The answer is – surprisingly well. The expletive-driven opening still delivers plenty of shock and awe, Grant’s Charles remains a bumbling, foppish delight and definitely Andie continues MacDowell’s to be Carrie a polarising most enigma, hampered by somewhat confused motivations and rather thin characterisation, culminating in perhaps the clunkiest line in 90s and noughties rom-com-dom: “Is it raining? I hadn’t noticed?” (and that’s after admitting she had slept with fewer men “than Madonna, more than Princess Di – I hope”).
Perhaps, though, it’s her and Charles’ seeming lack of chemistry that actually made Four Weddings such a hit. Audiences had plenty to talk about – and debate – once the credits rolled. Wouldn’t Kristin Scott Thomas’ Fi have been a better fit? Was Charlotte Coleman’s sparky Scarlett really just his flatmate?
And in truth, perhaps the only romance in Four Weddings that really works is that between Simon Callow’s scene-stealing Gareth and John Hannah’s soulful Matthew.
“I remember the first time I saw Gareth on the dance floor – I feared lives would be lost,” Matthew notes early on, before stopping more than clocks during his heartfelt eulogy to his “closest friend”, cutting through any cloying sentimentality built up by his pitchperfect recitation of Auden’s Funeral Blues by lamenting “his recipe for duck a la banana goes with him to his grave”.
The comedy, though, still feels as crisp and cutting as in 1994, Curtis capturing the awkwardness of small talk and stilted conversations at wedding receptions magnificently (this was inspired by him attending more than 60 nuptials over the course of a decade after all).
The inappropriate best man’s speech, Freudian and other slips during the vows, the relative who takes offence at everyone, the seating plan that brings back ghosts of your past – all identifiable scenarios, executed with panache.
Four Weddings and A Funeral is available to stream on TVNZ+.