Mark Reviews Movies: LOVE, WEDDINGS & OTHER DISASTERS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 3, 2020

The question isn't if there's anything to like in Love, Weddings & Other Disasters. It's if there's anything not to hate in this movie.

The obvious answer is some of the cast, although even that point comes with an objection. Maggie Grace, for example, plays the closest thing to this rambling, multi-character and multi-situation story's protagonist as Jessie, a florist who ends up planning her first wedding—a big shindig for a popular mayoral candidate in Boston. Grace is pretty and charming and all of the qualities we expect from the lead in a romantic-comedy, but this movie doesn't know what to do with her or her character.

Jessie's story begins with her skydiving with her crying, screaming fiancé, only for him to dump her mid-fall and for her to return the favor by dropping him into a lake. Then, Jessie parachutes directly into the bride, groom, minister, bridesmaids, and groomsmen at a lakeside wedding ceremony. Video of the incident goes viral online, turning Jessie into the "Wedding Trasher."

That's about the end of any defining characteristic about Jessie, who spends the rest of the movie in autopilot, planning the big wedding between Robert (Dennis Staroselsky) and Liz (Caroline Portu), while occasionally flirting with Mack (Diego Boneta), a late arrival to the story who heads a band Jessie wants to hire for the reception. He's in a tough spot, since the band's co-founder and his best friend is currently having a John-and-Yoko moment. Writer/director Dennis Dugan may have no clue what to do with any of these characters or storylines, but he definitely knows the easiest, most obvious jokes available for every situation he's devised.

Take two of the other major characters. One is Lawrence (Jeremy Irons), the prominent couple's first wedding planner (who still has a job and seems to be doing most of the design, hiring most of the workers, and actually running the whole event), an obsessive perfectionist and widower whose randomly appearing and instantly disappearing friends set him up on a blind date. As for that date, she's Sara (Diane Keaton), and here's the joke: She actually is visually impaired.

It's difficult to determine what the most embarrassing part of this storyline is: that Dugan based an entire plot on a bad pun, that Sara has been visually impaired for decades but still bumbles and stumbles as if she woke up in an unfamiliar place wearing a blindfold, or that Irons and Keaton are this hard-pressed to find roles these days. To be clear, the two actors are fine enough and play these roles with as much dignity as possible. To be even clearer, there's nothing fine or dignified about anything the two have to do in this movie. Lawrence keeps forgetting that Sara can't see (He writes her a note after their first night together), and Sara keeps bumping into or falling over things.

The other major stories involves Captain Ritchie (Andrew Bachelor), a tour guide on one of those amphibious Duck trucks, and Jimmy (Andy Goldenberg), the candidate's loser brother. Ritchie meets the woman of his dreams (who loves the story of Cinderella, has a tattoo of a glass slipper on her neck, and leaves an actual glass shoe for her possible Prince Charming) while giving a tour. He spends a couple scenes pining and looking for the mystery woman, before Dugan realizes that there's absolutely nothing to do with this story until the final act.

Jimmy ends up on a dating show, literally chained to the enigmatic not-really-a-lawyer/stripper Svetlana (Melinda Hill), for a chance at winning a million bucks (The show looks as if it's airing on public-access television, so the prize money is an accidental joke). Svetlana, by the way, is in debt to the Russian mob, and there's an incredibly discomforting scene in which Jimmy has to hide under the bed while the mob boss apparently rapes Jimmy's gameshow partner (The "joke" is that he didn't).

All of these stories, of course, come together by the climax, by way of plenty of contrivances and coincidences—but not before an even greater abundance of pratfalls and slapstick. The sentimentality of Love, Weddings & Other Disasters is cheap, and the jokes are even cheaper. The movie may be about love and technically feature more than one wedding, but the final item on the title's list is the best way to describe it.

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