Messing's Wedding a Bad Date

Here’s the deal: You’re somewhat snotty and majorly spoiled little half-sister is getting married. The groom just happens to be best friends with your former fiancé who dumped you two years prior. Said guy is the Best Man and everyone involved in the wedding, from Mom on down to the Flower Girl, to this day still thinks the end of that affair was all your doing. What’s a girl to do?

This is the situation facing New York businesswoman Kat Ellis (Debra Messing), and her solution involves $6,000, her 401(k) and an escort named Nick (Dermut Mulroney) just oozing masculinity. It’s probably not the way out of this quandary the rest of us would go, but for Kat, hiring Nick and flying him to London, is the only choice there is. Sure it’s a little sleazy, and it’s definitely more than a bit dishonest, but if this is what it takes to make her caddish old flame Jeffery (Jeremy Sheffield) jealous and shut up her blabbermouth mother Bunny (Holland Taylor) than it’s exactly what she’s going to do.

But Nick’s charms do more than just intoxicate friends and family, they also worm their way into Kat’s heart. Even more, the flippantly witty woman is quietly casting her own spell on the usually unbendable escort; her zany allure making him think they’re might be more to women – life – than just a few easy dollars carrying them on his arm. To him, every woman gets the exact love life, good or bad, that she wants, and Nick is starting to think Kat maybe needs to have her outlook changed. If so, he’s just the man to do, too.

This is the world of the new romantic comedy The Wedding Date. While it is definitely a movie that proves without a doubt the star quality of Will & Grace stalwart Messing, the flick itself is decidedly uninspiring, traveling down a familiar road with few bumps or detours along the way to enliven the trip. It is a flat, listless farce weighed down with anemically unappealing supporting performances by Sheffield, the usually reliable Taylor and Amy Adams (whose particularly awful) as Kat’s moronic sister. And while Mulroney is definitely a breathlessly sexy performer even under the worst circumstances, he’s given little to do here except act like a sexual Yoda and look wistfully at Messing.

Luckily, Messing really is wonderful, and for all the script’s faults in regards to Nick’s character Mulroney and the star still manage a splendidly intoxicating chemistry almost in spite of themselves. I really wanted to see them end up together, and with all of the stops and starts in the movie’s dramatic momentum and the tiredly over-familiar storyline this has to be seen as some small win based solely on the good will generated by the two leads. In fact, one after-party encounter on Kat’s father’s boat is as sweetly – and sweatily – romantic and lovely as any I’ve seen in a romantic comedy in ages.

Unfortunately, it isn’t enough. The film commits the cardinal sin of forgetting the remainder of the romance, not exactly a trait something like this usually strives for. Worse, even at a brisk ninety minutes it’s too long almost by half, this thread-bare Pretty Woman-inspired plotline running of steam long before anyone even remotely has a chance to say, “I do.” Clare Kilner’s (How to Deal) direction is flat and listless, while Dana Fox’s adaptation of Elizabeth Young’s book Asking for Trouble, both above and below the surface, doesn’t come into contact with a cliché it doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace. Even Blake Neely’s music is a waste. Syrupy and full of treacle, the only job it does well is to telegraph every single emotion the movie desperately wants the audience to feel long before the characters have their own chance to do the same.

It is remarkable, then, that Messing manages to come off completely unscathed. Flirty and funny, silly and seductive, she’s definitely a movie star and capable of carrying things on her sublimely svelte shoulders with sunny invigorating grace. Just not this movie, as The Wedding Date is one chick flick better left at the alter.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)