Four Weddings and a Funeral

A British comedy that's classy and commercial - and, most important, very, very funny. Admittedly, as it charts the social, sexual and romantic fortunes of thirty-something Charles (Grant), a self-confessed serial monogamist, and the friends, old flames and potential lovers (notably MacDowell's rather enigmatic American beauty), who are his fellow guests at one wedding after another, the film's focus on well-heeled jovial oafs and its conventional attitude to modern relationships hardly make for 'radical romantic comedy'. But that's quibbling. Newell's direction switches smoothly between affecting intimacy and sequences of rowdy chaos; perhaps the film's trump card, however, is its emotional honesty, particularly in the poignant and sobering funeral scene. Genuine feel-good entertainment.