A formula romantic comedy that's still good...

Author's Rating:

Pros: Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney and a sunny ending...

Cons: Rather contrived plot that hits all the romantic comedy marks...

The Bottom Line: 
A good date movie with nice turns by Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney in a formula romantic comedy that's still good.

Okay, anyone who's read almost any of my reviews knows that I have this thing for romantic comedy. Unfortunately when it comes to movies I think I got the X chromosome instead of the Y chromosome. I knew about The Wedding Date but I didn't exactly rush out to see it either in the theater or on video. But through that wonder of modern technology, known as video on demand, I did manage to catch The Wedding Date and found that, despite some misgivings that I did like it.

The Wedding Date opens with Kat Ellis (the extremely likeable Debra Messing) hiring a male escort to accompany her to England for her step sisters wedding. The escort, Nick Mercer (Dermot Mulroney), will pretend to be her new squeeze since she'll be seeing her ex-fiance Jeffrey (Jeremy Sheffield), who dumped her, at the wedding. This sets up the usual middle act of meeting Kat's slightly off family like her mother Bunny (Holland Taylor), her step sister Amy (Amy Adams) who always has to be the center of attention, and her normal step-father Victor (Peter Egan) who may or may not know more than he lets on. There's also Amy's fiance Edward (Jack Davenport) and his best friend and best man Jeffrey who is, of course, Kat's ex-fiance.

Against this rather tangled background you have Kat and Nick who's relationship starts off professionally but may or may not start evolving into something else (oh, who the heck am I kidding, they start falling for each other). As I've said in other reviews, for me a movie is about tone and pacing. Most romantic comedies involve some kind of meet-cute type situation and also involves some kind of surprise before the denouement. The Wedding Date does hit those marks but the surprise was, in my opinion, rather surprising.

I've always found Debra Messing really likeable and here she's very likeable. Dermot Mulroney and her have pretty good chemistry and make their characters work through a rather forced situation. Amy Adams plays Amy with the right amount of self absorption required while Peter Egan plays the wise father with the well timed advice well. And Jeremy Sheffield plays Jeffrey as just the kind of self absorbed jerk you'd expect him to be. But of course, it makes you wonder what attracted Kat to him in the first place.

I found The Wedding Date to be a very enjoyable movie and had a good time. Of course, now that the movie is over I want to see what happens next to Kat and Nick. The one part I didn't like was the resolution to the surprise. Without giving anything away, Kat's a much nicer person than I could ever be cause if someone betrayed me like that, well, there'd be heck to pay. Except for that part, The Wedding Date is a fine romantic comedy that you should enjoy.