'Love Wedding Repeat' Review: Olivia Munn-Sam Claflin starrer rom-com is a formulaic mess sans a beating heart
Spoilers for Netflix film 'Love Wedding Repeat'
You either have it or you don't. The romantic comedy is a delicate thing that only works when all the cogs and wheels work in perfect precision but the filmmaker also makes it seem effortless. A bit like love and magic.
'Love Wedding Repeat' has comedy gold as its premise. Think 'Groundhog Day' set at a wedding, mixed with the hijinks of 'Death at a Funeral' and the romantic fluffiness of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral'. It's like they shot everything that worked in previous films of this genre and hoped something would stick. Very little does.
Instead, it comes across as a bit 'paint-by-numbers' formulaic, without a beating heart. We have Sam Claflin with a bad haircut, desperately trying to be Hugh Grant in 'Four Wedding...' but he doesn't have half his charisma or his patented 'awkward Englishness'.
Olivia Munn is also no Andie McDowell and it seems like she is stuck in the wrong movie. She looks like she is about to spew some raunchy joke in a Judd Apatow movie but is biting her tongue because she is supposed to be just window-dressing here as the "hot girl." She has far too much personality for this Richard Curtis-esque movie.
Richard Curtis movies, as we all know, are always more about the awkward male lead than it is about the gorgeous, unattainable dream girl. In fact, Curtis has done a better version of this same concept in 'About Time' with a much better-suited rom-com worthy cast of Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, and Bill Nighy.
So it is impossible not to see 'Love Wedding Repeat' as a wasted opportunity because it can't decide whether it wants to embody the sweetness of 'Four Weddings..' or embrace the complete comedic mayhem of 'Death at a Funeral'.
You will see a pattern to this review of quoting better known and loved comedies and rom-coms because that is the feeling you get while watching the film — like it is the after taste burp of better movies. It also sadly wastes its best conceit — replaying the same wedding scenario with slight alterations that determine if the hero will get the girl or not because chance can be a bitch or heaven-sent.
Only two scenarios really play out. There is also none of the fun with 'rewind and fast-forward' montages through very similar scenarios that play out just a little differently with enormously different consequences.
Instead, we get a baggy middle, where we see flashes of other scenarios play out but they are so brief and clumped together in a confused hodge-podge montage that we have no idea what went down in those other scenarios.
The film is also light on logic. It never explains why Jack, the hero, didn't call or text Dina, even once, after their magical weekend in London when they almost kissed, for three. whole. years. Are you kidding me? In this day and age?
You also don't know why those children randomly come into the dining area and mess up the cards of just one particular table. Had they been instructed by the devil? Were they under some bizarre trance? Did they not like the look of that particular table?
Also, isn't it customary while roofie-ing someone's drink to ask them if they'd like a drink and slipping it into the drink just before handing it to them... like immediately? Instead of just pouring it into a glass eons before they actually lay their hands on the glass, exponentially increasing the chances of roofie-ing the wrong person. There is "chance" and then there is absolutely avoidable carelessness and you have to learn which is which, to hedge your bets.
The final 'good' scenario that sees our hero united with his girl has him roofie himself, mostly leaving him incapable of any grand moves. He is also more articulate in his roofied state than he is sober because he talks some sense into both his hyperventilating sister and Marc, the uninvited guest, who is nursing a case of unrequited love and hell-bent on ruining the wedding. A shout out to Jack Farthing who plays Marc, who seems like the only actor who seems to really know what he is doing in this movie in terms of comedic timing.
In the hands of a better director (and editor and scriptwriter), maybe the other actors would have found their groove and the story would have been a better, more tightly scripted delight. But in its present form, it a pleasant enough weekend binge but it never reaches the heights of a well-crafted rom-com.
'Love Wedding Repeat' premiered on April 10 on Netflix.