Wedding Planner, The  (2000)

Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Matthew McConaughey
Director: Adam Shankman
Rating: PG-13

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Review Posted: 2.4.01

Spoilers: Minor

Rating: 5/10

By Dennis Landmann

"Predictable;  the usual do's and dont's"

The Wedding Planner starts with Mary (later played by Lopez) as a little kid, playing with Barbie dolls at a wedding. And we cut into the far, far future as Mary is now an adult. And now she's preparing a wedding. It's such a cheesy formula. Women will like this movie more than men. Personally, I did not like it for obvious reasons.

The trailer gave away most of the surprises. In order to sell this movie, Columbia had to give away the fact that Mary falls for Steve Edison (McConaughey) who is Fran Donelly's husband. Mary is preparing a wedding for Fran and Steve. Earlier in the movie, Steve saved Mary's shoe, I mean, life. The Wedding Planner is somewhat of a strange romantic comedy. For one, a character falls for another, but later relents, and in the end falls in love again. It's the simple, yet annoying love story formula of Hollywood (who else?) movies. The same goes for Saving Silverman, where a character falls for another, then doesn't, then does in the end. Anyway, Mary goes about preparing Fran's wedding.

Along the way, Mary and Steve get closer and closer to each other, by means of emotions and love. Also, Mary's father Salvatore (Alex Rocco) is trying to set her up with a once horny child-hood boy. Now grown up, Massimo (Justin Chambers) is actually a nice guy, yet annoys Mary. Still, Mary and her friend Penny (Judy Greer) go about organizing Fran's wedding. Fran has to leave for some magical movie reason, which allows Mary and Steve to spend a lot of time together.

The Wedding Planner has well-developed characters, yes, but that doesn't mean they're likeable. The problems lie within what the characters do. Their behavior and reaction to things. For example, Mary is portrayed as a lonely, yet confident single woman. And she's Italian. Two things that don't connect. First, Lopez doesn't pass as an Italian women. Sorry. Second, Lopez is NOT the kind of woman to stay single, even through her thirties still. Steve Edison is more like a playboy than a doctor. Fran is more like a control freak who takes things a lot more seriously than others.

The only thing that The Wedding Planner had to offer was nice acting and some nice scenes between Lopez and McConaughey. Their characters are pre-determined to fall in love and live happily ever after in the end. But before that can happen, the movie has to follow the usual formula.

Massimo is sort of like a stalker. It's to assume he really loves Mary or just does it for the hell of it. Both of them are ending up with each other. Steve and Fran end up with each other, of course. But do both pairs love each other? No, not really. So they get to the point of finding true love in the end, something which the audience ended up knowing before the characters. Mary and Steve do love each other, but they've ignored it (mostly Mary) from after the first hour until the end.

The reason I did not rate it below 5 out of 10 is because of the great chemistry and scenes between the two leads. Also, Jennifer Lopez looked mighty hot in the movie.

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