Once upon a time no amount of cash would induce me to knock a British-made film. Now you need to slip me a wad of cash to make me pay to see one. Well, a romantic one at any rate.
Want to make your own English romantic 'comedy'? Well, the formula is relatively simple. Set it in London, invariably in the unbearably trendy Notting Hill, make your leads middle class, put them in flats most Londoners would never be able to afford, have an out-of-work actor (like that awful Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence), write an unamusing script (okay, Shooting Fish had a couple of funny sequences) and add Charlotte Coleman (a lady who has distinctly lost her babyface charm) to the mix.
Four Weddings and A Funeral, indeed, has a lot to answer. It even starts like the Hugh Grant 'classic'. Lead man and struggling actor (yawn) Victor Bukowksi, (utterly unbelievable Scottish name) played by Douglas Henshall (a very poor man's Ewan McGregor) is late to catch his ex, psychologist Sylvia (Lena Headey), before she marries an earnest plonker called Dave (Mark Strong from Fever Pitch). He was unfaithful to her eight months before you see and is desperately trying to make amends.
Well, as if by magic two Spanish rubbish men twirl Victor around a bit at a dump and hey presto he's transported back in time, and he can right all the wrongs of eight months ago. Oh, if only (hence the feeble title), love and life were that simple.
Morbidly watchable throughout, this film is nonetheless essentially awful. Henshall is no Woody Allen and isn't funny, Headey is no more a psychologist than Margaret Thatcher is a communist and the plot is so wafer-thin you could charge a speck of dust through it. Not a Christmas treat. More like the cinematic equivalent of bumfluff.
Ben Walsh
Want to make your own English romantic 'comedy'? Well, the formula is relatively simple. Set it in London, invariably in the unbearably trendy Notting Hill, make your leads middle class, put them in flats most Londoners would never be able to afford, have an out-of-work actor (like that awful Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence), write an unamusing script (okay, Shooting Fish had a couple of funny sequences) and add Charlotte Coleman (a lady who has distinctly lost her babyface charm) to the mix.
Four Weddings and A Funeral, indeed, has a lot to answer. It even starts like the Hugh Grant 'classic'. Lead man and struggling actor (yawn) Victor Bukowksi, (utterly unbelievable Scottish name) played by Douglas Henshall (a very poor man's Ewan McGregor) is late to catch his ex, psychologist Sylvia (Lena Headey), before she marries an earnest plonker called Dave (Mark Strong from Fever Pitch). He was unfaithful to her eight months before you see and is desperately trying to make amends.
Well, as if by magic two Spanish rubbish men twirl Victor around a bit at a dump and hey presto he's transported back in time, and he can right all the wrongs of eight months ago. Oh, if only (hence the feeble title), love and life were that simple.
Morbidly watchable throughout, this film is nonetheless essentially awful. Henshall is no Woody Allen and isn't funny, Headey is no more a psychologist than Margaret Thatcher is a communist and the plot is so wafer-thin you could charge a speck of dust through it. Not a Christmas treat. More like the cinematic equivalent of bumfluff.
Ben Walsh