Wedding Bells (2016)

You can't fool me, movie, that's not Danica McKeller on the left.

    We open in New York with Danica McKellar as a fashion designer under stress. This is established with ruthless efficiency in less than a minute with: shots of the New York skyline, a terse phone conversation, a crumpled dress design, and our main character having to be reminded about a bridal fitting. I’m fifty seconds in and at the least I can commend this movie on its efficiency. She’s then established as the maid of honor in an upcoming wedding and there are a couple of lines about how she needs to eat. We’ll see if that comes back up.

    During the dress fitting she firmly states, “Not everybody needs a guy to live happily ever after.” I assume the entire rest of the movie will be proving that statement wrong. More food talk as they all go to dinner, so the romantic interest must be a chef. Ah, I see, two career professionals not interested in dating are involved in their friends’ wedding, are reluctantly paired, solve probably marriage hi-jinks, and fall in love. One check of IMDB later ... yup. I do lose points for not predicting that plot shenanigans take them out of the city to a small town inn but this is early days, I’ll improve on predicting the entire plot in, lemme see, two minutes and twenty three seconds. Oh, and I know the main character names now, Danica McKellar is Molly and Kavan Smith is Nick. Bruce Boxleitner is Charlie, and I only care about his character name because he’s played by Bruce Boxleitner.

    I think the game I’m going to play with this one is which side of the couple I like more. The edge in these is always going to be on the woman’s side, let’s see how much they tip the scale. Right now I’m neutral, we’ll see who annoys me first.

    Oh no, Nick has a square head and looks like showkiller Ted McGinley. Welp, Danica's won this one. That didn’t last long

    Officially getting annoyed at the married couple, and I’m normally not on the side of the anti-food snob but the food being served is pretty awful sounding. And then wow, less than five minutes and we have our first plot point: the bride’s family has lost a ton of money and suddenly the wedding is in jeopardy. So far this is more a rapid-fire skit than a movie. What’s this movie actually going to consist of, just meandering scenes of the couple falling in inevitable love?

    Nick was Lorne on Stargate: Atlantis, that’s where I know him from! I hated that character!

    While trying to figure out wedding stuff back at the couple’s apartment Nick catches Molly grabbing a snack and snits about how she didn’t like his food, which, sorry, your fault, dude, and also maybe read the room? He better have a dead puppy story if I’m not going to hate Molly settling for him (spoiler: it’s actually a dead mom story).

    Turns out Nick’s restaurant is closing as an investor got caught up in the same Ponzi scheme as the bride’s family, Molly says they may as well use the food that would otherwise go to waste to cater the wedding, Nick’s dad owns a run down inn, and we have a full premise: our two leads will throw together the wedding for their friends who I predict will have a break up scene at ... I’m watching with the commercials cut out ... sixty-five minutes in.

    They’re off to the Berkshires, conveniently forgetting that Molly had a huge deadline she was already behind on Fake late crisis he has to rescue her from? (spoiler: nope, it is occasionally brought up but ends up not being a real problem). Nick and his dad have some tension, wonder how Molly’s going to be the key to fixing that.

    I would like to point out that characters keep talking down this inn like it’s terrible but it is just gorgeous, the worst thing I can see is some old drop cloths. There’s even a significant shot of a piano that I’m sure will come back up. So far all the characters are coming off just fine, even Nick’s had a few decent moments, but I’m rapidly going off the bride. She’s the city girl who doesn’t like all this country nonsense and it’s clear the movie is tilted against her hard but I’ll admit the manipulation is working on me.

    The bride and groom skedaddle for the night for plot reasons which to me holds the promise of more Boxleitner, which I’m fine with. Left to their own devices our two leads do a decent job during dinner in the kitchen establishing their childhood traumas and how their parents issues caused their issues, and if that seems reductive that because it in but for a romance like this it works fine.

    After some decent and charming scenes we have to introduce conflict: Molly wants to do up the inn all classic-like, Nick wants to modernize it. I look forward to their eventual blending of styles. Oh, shit, that’s the mandate handed down in the very next scene by the bridge and groom. This script is all about progression. What else has this writer done? Oh, a ton of Hallmark movies? Hmm.

    As predicted we meander through some bonding/promises of romance scenes. Danica and Kavan are selling these pretty well. I don’t know that I buy the spark of romance but they seem like perfectly nice people getting along just fine. I don’t buy the moment where they supposedly invent the concept of fusion cooking out of thin air but it’s nice enough watching them play the scene. I do like them a lot more than the supposed bride and groom, which again I acknowledge that the manipulation is working.

    Some more scenes of charm then a fairly straightforward speech from Nick about cooking that involves bringing together ingredients that you wouldn’t think would work but do and jeez just fall into bed already. I’m guessing it’s a rule that they couple can’t bang before declaring they’re in love but we’re almost fifty minutes in at this point and any actual people would just go to town on each other.

    The bride and groom show back up, tensions aflame, and we have mini bachelor / bachelorette party montages that tick many, many gender stereotype boxes. The bride and groom now have seven minutes to meet my break-up deadline and I’m starting to get nervous.

    Nice little touching scene between Nick and his dad. Boxleitner brings the tears.

    Ooh, ooh, fight between the bride and groom at the rehearsal dinner and they take off to fight at ... sixty-five minutes and 41 seconds! Bam, nailed it!

    While cleaning up in the kitchen Molly and Nick admit they doubt the couple is actually in love which … guys? Was this not brought up before? After several aborted earlier kisses they finally smooch whilst talking about love and they seem like a perfectly nice couple who would enjoy a few months of serious dates but if this ends with this wedding turning into theirs I will flip many tables.

    I have now scrolled ahead and I’m half-right in way that might be acceptable.

    The bride and groom wait until all the guests are assembled and the music starts to announce they’re not going through with it? Man, fuck these guys. After the wedding Molly and Nick have such a perfunctory fight about whether or not their feelings were just a result of being stuck at the inn, maybe they won’t see each other again, I don’t care I’m checked out until the end now, although he does pop the question way too fast after seeing her again. Jeez, Hallmark, dating can be romantic as well.

    So their eventual wedding is a copy of the one the other couple bailed on, which is how I was half right. It’s an earned enough ending, with the former bride and groom the maid of honor and best man and all the previous setups ticked off the list of payoffs.

    I have a slight prediction going forward: any of these movies, in isolation, are perfectly fine, can even be charming, but in their sheer bulk may eventually overwhelm. Take this one: I can see why Danica McKellar made a name for herself for doing these and Kavan Smith is a much better romantic lead than I would have thought, and of course having Bruce Boxleitner wandering around the edges of scenes is always a plus. The script is tight as a drum, the sets and cinematography are basically porn for the intended audience, and the direction and editing are efficient and get out of their own way.

    So this one was a nice fluffy little souffle of a movie, but when you have night after night of souffle after souffle and they keep hitting the same beats over and over and it’s variations on the same three stories it’s going to slowly but surely turn into something maddening. So congrats to this movie for being first and getting to not be compared to any of the others.