Star Rating:

The Wedding Video

Director: Nigel Cole

Actors: Miriam Margolyes, Lucy Punch, Robert Webb, Russell Hound

Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001

Genre(s): Factual

Running time: 94 minutes

Unsurprisingly since the surprising breakout success of Bridesmaids, there have been a slew of wedding flicks. We've already had the decent Five Year Engagement, while The Bachelorette and The Best Men are incoming. The Wedding Video's unique selling point is that it's shot in a Cloverfield/Project X manner; meaning it's ostensibly filmed by one of the actors within the narrative of the film. It's also British and really shite.

That bloke off of Peep Show (Webb) is about to get married to that bird from Bad Teacher that isn't Cameron Diaz (Punch), but a spanner in the works arrives in the form of his best man and brother - that comedian with the handle bar moustache (Hound) - who insists on filming on the whole thing as part of their wedding present. High-jinx ensues when we realise that the best man and bride to be actually know each other, with the former admitting to a bit of a thing for the latter. All of this, naturally, is filmed as if this was a wedding video. If you buy that setup then, FYI, that mail that went straight to your spam from a Nigerian prince offering you millions of euro is bollocks as well.

There are obviously a lot of talented people here; Punch in particular is a comedic actor firmly on the rise. The problems occur with casting and a complete and utter lack of originality. The clichéd structuring of the script wouldn’t be an issue if the film were actually funny, but while obviously improvised, the cast however talented still need something to work with - the recent Paul Rudd starrer Wanderlust is another case in point. You can't turn on the camera and expect magic to happen when people have seen this type of plot a million times before.

Casting Webb in the straight role doesn't make much sense either - especially when Hound's guy would've been a much better fit. As with other comedies of a similar ilk, the point is for the majority of the laughs to come from kooky supporting players; but alas, not a chuckle was heard.

Would you pay cinema bucks to see an actual wedding video? See, the marketing is almost as crap as the film.