The Wedding Date

‘Will & Grace’s’ Debra Messing gets a stab at silver-screen stardom in this transatlantic romantic comedy. She plays sad singleton New Yorker Kat, who’s dreading her half-sister’s wedding in London as it means confronting not only her dysfunctional family but also her ex, who’s best man. Rather than admit to a hopeless love life, she decides to hire male escort Dermot Mulroney to pose as her new beau and make her ex jealous enough to want her back. So, can she regain his heart or… no, stop, wait… could that be love already staring her in the face in the form of her debonair companion…?
You can see it all coming a mile off. From its plucky American heroine and British country wedding setting, down to its Shania Twain and Maroon 5 soundtrack, this seems a sad case of cinema as marketing department memo – it’s ‘Four Weddings’ divided by ‘Pretty Woman’ to the power of ‘Bridget Jones’. Correspondingly, your enjoyment of it will depend upon how well disposed you are to such antecedents.
Messing gets to show off her comic skills and there are a few chucklesome lines, plus solid support from British TV talent, including Jack ‘Coupling’ Davenport and Peter ‘Ever Decreasing Circles’ Egan. Mulroney, however, is a pretty inert superstud, and you never buy his attraction to the messed-up Messing. But this is not the place for emotional insight; in this gossamer-light world, such morally dubious acts as, say, hiring a gigolo to hide your single status from your family aren’t symptomatic of dark, disturbing insecurities, but breezily kooky. Watching this is like briefly getting back with an ex – it’s all very familiar and it gives you a nice warm fuzzy feeling, but once that’s passed, you really hate yourself for it.