4 Weddings is ‘smug’, said film chiefs
IT is the much-loved romcom that made Hugh Grant famous – and is so fondly remembered that he will reprise the role for this week’s Comic Relief.
His portrayal of unlucky-in-love Charles in Four Weddings And A Funeral in 1994 turned him into an overnight international star and something of a heart-throb.
But just before its release, censors condemned the film as ‘morally bankrupt’ and an unfunny failure – and branded Grant’s character a ‘callous little s***’.
One examiner who assessed the film wrote: ‘As well as being morally bankrupt, this film joins a long line of British comedies that fail even as the credits roll.’
Another wrote: ‘If this new British comedy were a person, you would not want it to be your friend.
‘Superficial, smug and carelessly (and worse, uninterestingly) nasty are words that spring to mind for a film whose central character is meant to be lovable and quirky, but is, for this viewer, a reprehensible, callous little s***.’
The unnamed censor added: ‘The set of attitudes the film displays… prevents it working as a romantic comedy.’
The damning verdict by staff at the British Board of Film Classification, revealed in archive papers obtained by The Mail on Sunday, was starkly at odds with both critics and the public.
Written by Richard Curtis and starring American actress Andie MacDowell as Carrie – with whom Charles falls in love – the film earned £190million at the box office and two Oscar nominations. But a censor concluded: ‘Apart from scenes involving Grant’s amazement at Carrie’s airy run through a sexual history involving 33 casually dismissed lovers and some moderately clever gags involving signed conversations with a deaf friend, this is even flatter than [low-budget 1993 British comedy] Leon The Pig Farmer.’
Asked about the censors’ verdicts, the film’s director, Mike Newell, said: ‘This is the whole very English thing of you can’t be seen to be enjoying something too much.’
The Comic Relief version reunites most of the cast from the 1994 movie.
Rowan Atkinson again plays a vicar, while Kristin Scott Thomas and Anna Chancellor will also return in the short sequel, to be screened on BBC1 on Friday.
The film censors eventually decided to give the movie a 15 certificate, warning of ‘strong language and moderate sex references’.