The sort of haphazard nonsense that gives the romcom a bad name
Love, Weddings & Other Disasters 12 cert, 96 min
★☆☆☆☆
Dir Dennis Dugan Starring Diane Keaton, Jeremy Irons, Maggie Grace, Diego Boneta, Andrew Bachelor, Andy Goldenberg, Dennis Staroselsky, Melinda Hill, Elle King
Disasters: well, they said it. The new film from Dennis Dugan is a frighteningly inept stab at a romantic comedy in the Nancy Meyers style (The Holiday, It’s Complicated), centred on two accomplished but lovably ditsy career women, one of whom is played by Diane Keaton. But all the trademark pleasures of a Meyers production – beautiful people, gentle screwball antics, plushly aspirational settings – have been more or less turned on their head here: the characters are all irritating if not flatly revolting, the sets and costumes (Keaton’s wardrobe aside) exhibit a dire lack of taste, and every scene looks as if it was shot through a dirty window.
The tale unfolds in the notobviously-romantic city of Boston, where florist Jessie (Maggie Grace) is trying to branch out into the wedding-planning business. This is proving tricky, since a video of her accidentally skydiving into a lakeside marriage ceremony and knocking the bride into the water has recently gone viral. But one day her big break arrives: she is hired to organise the forthcoming nuptials of a young and handsome mayoral candidate (Dennis Staroselsky) instead of Lawrence Phillips (Jeremy Irons), the punctilious doyen of the town’s event-planning circuit. Phillips is a widower, though his friends have decided to set him up on a blind date with a twist – the twist being that his date is in fact blind. Enter Sara (Keaton), being dragged by her guide dog into a pyramid of champagne coupes that Lawrence and his staff have spent the morning stacking. This is one of those romcoms in which the only way characters ever meet is via some kind of physical collision.
The Keaton-irons romance is but one strand among many, all of which end up haphazardly knotted around the society wedding Jessie is trying to organise. The others run the gamut from tacky to grotty and are only notable for how little chemistry is shared by any of the participants. The worst involves the mayoral candidate’s hapless brother (Andy Goldenberg) taking part in a reality television stunt in which he is chained to a Russian stripper, played by the comedian Melinda Hill, whose gifts do not extend to Russian accents.
The film switches between various storylines apparently at random, sometimes cutting to a local busker (Elle King) in between, whose insipid strummings are meant to serve as a commentary on the surrounding events. “Don’t blame love,” she caws during one such interlude, “the blame is on us.” The admission of liability is welcome, at least.
On VOD from today