April 10, 2020
by Carla Hay
Directed by Dean Craig
Culture Representation: Taking place in Italy, the romantic comedy “Love Wedding Repeat” has a predominantly white British cast of characters (with some representation of Asians and one black/biracial person) representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: At his sister’s wedding, a man tries to reconnect with a potential love interest and prevent a highly intoxicated uninvited guest from spoiling the wedding.
Culture Audience: “Love Wedding Repeat” will appeal mostly to people who have little or no expectations for a romantic comedy to be very romantic or very funny.
Imagine being at a wedding reception and being stuck at a table with mostly annoying people who say and do ridiculous things. That might give you an idea of what it’s like to watch “Love Wedding Repeat,” a very misguided attempt at being a romantic comedy. The movie (written and directed by Dean Craig) is based on the 2012 French film “Plan de Table,” which translates to “Table Plan” in English. “Plan de Table” was a flop with audiences and critics when it was released in France, so it’s kind of mind-boggling that the “Love Wedding Repeat” filmmakers wanted to do a remake of a flop. However, changing the setting to Italy, making it an English-language film with a mostly British cast, and altering some of the plot elements did not make “Love Wedding Repeat” an improvement on the original film.
“Love Wedding Repeat” is also split into two different storylines, with the same characters but with alternate endings. This split personality of the film ultimately falls flat, because it makes the first half of the film look like an even more of a time waster than the second half. The latter half is the one that’s supposed to have the “real” ending. The way that the movie transitions between the two storylines is clumsy at best. Penny Ryder, a Judi Dench sound-alike, does some brief voiceover narration playing the “oracle” of the movie, where she spouts some mystical-sounding mumbo jumbo about fate, destiny, and how one little action can have a big chain reaction on people’s lives.
In every movie with the word “wedding” in the title, there are two people in the story whom the audience is supposed to want to end up together. In “Love Wedding Repeat,” those two people are Jack (played by Sam Claflin) and Dina (played by Olivia Munn). At the beginning of the movie, it isn’t clear what Jack does for a living (he later tells Dina that he’s recently qualified to be a structural engineer), while Dina is an American journalist whose specialty is covering wars. They’re visiting Italy for some unknown reason and now have to go their separate ways back to their regular lives.
The movie begins with Jack and Dina having a starry-eyed romantic stroll in Italy in their last night together on their trip. Jack tells Dina, “This has been a pretty special weekend.” Dina replies, “You’re not as irritating as I thought you would be.” Dina is a friend of Jack’s younger sister Hayley, who apparently set them up on this blind date.
As he leans in to give a goodbye kiss to Dina, they’re suddenly interrupted by Jack’s former college classmate Greg (played by Alexander Forsyth), who literally comes out of nowhere to barge in between them and is completely oblivious that he’s ruined a romantic moment. The movie is filled with these types of unrealistic barge-ins where people randomly show up to cause uncomfortable situations.
Greg than proceeds to embarrass Jack by telling Dina that Jack used to have the nickname Mr. Wank in college because Jack was known for “wanking” (British slang for masturbating) a lot back then. Jack denies that he was the person with the nickname Mr. Wank, but based on how the scene is played, viewers are supposed to believe that Jack probably did have that nickname.
Meanwhile, Greg can’t take a hint that Jack and Dina want to be alone together (this movie is filled with socially clueless people), so he prattles on while Jack (who’s too spineless to end the conversation with Greg and get him to move along) watches with a frustrated expression on his face. Since Jack doesn’t have what it takes to get rid of Greg, Jack then makes the decision to say goodbye to Dina by giving her an uncomfortable handshake instead of a kiss. The disappointed look on Dina’s face shows that Jack had a chance to possibly continue their romantic connection, but he blew it.
The movie then fast forwards three years later. Jack is in Italy again, this time for the wedding of his sister Hayley (played by Eleanor Tomlinson), who is apparently marrying into a well-to-do Italian family, since the wedding is taking place at a large and beautiful estate. (The production design and cinematography are the best things about “Love Wedding Repeat.”)
Jack and Hayley’s parents are dead, so Jack will be the one to give away the bride. And wouldn’t you know that at this big wedding where there are hundreds of guests and numerous tables at the wedding reception, Jack will be seated at the same table as Dina, Jack’s ex-girlfriend Amanda (played by Freida Pinto) and Amanda’s current boyfriend Chaz (played by Allan Mustafa). It’s mentioned at some point in the movie that Jack and Amanda dated each other for two years after he and Dina first met each other in Italy, but the relationship between Jack and Amanda ended horribly because she was a difficult shrew. Jack describes Amanda as a “nightmare of a girlfriend.”
And apparently, Amanda hasn’t changed since she dated Jack. Amanda and Chaz are a bickering couple who are obviously mismatched. She’s cold-hearted, bossy, and shows a lot of contempt for Chaz, who is annoyed with her because he proposed to Amanda six months ago and she still hasn’t given him an answer. Chaz is so insecure that he’s fixated on comparing his penis size and sexual skills to Jack’s and other men’s, and Chaz constantly brags that he’s the best of them all. That’s essentially what his character is about for the entire movie. Meanwhile, it becomes apparent during the course of the film that Amanda still has some unresolved feelings for Jack.
Also seated at the same table are Jack’s close friend Bryan (played by Joel Fry), a high-strung, self-absorbed aspiring actor who wants to meet a famous Italian movie director who’s at the wedding; Rebecca (played by Aisling Bea), a tactless motormouth who has a crush on Bryan; and Sidney (played by Tim Key), a socially awkward car-insurance agent who’s desperate to give the impression that he’s not boring. There’s also a “surprise” uninvited guest who’s seated at the table: Marc (played by Jack Farthing), a former childhood classmate of Hayley’s who’s obsessively in love with her and very upset that she’s getting married to someone else.
Jack and Dina are very happy to see each other at the wedding. They’re both available—Dina recently broke up with a work colleague who cheated on her with several other women—but, of course, this wouldn’t be a romantic comedy without obstacles to keep this would-be couple apart. “Love Wedding Repeat” uses very flimsy plot devices to prevent Jack and Dina from spending a lot of time together at the wedding reception, even though they’re seated at the same table.
The main “obstacle” is that a very intoxicated Marc—who’s unexpectedly shown up at the wedding while high on cocaine, which he continues to snort throughout most of the movie—is determined to ruin the wedding by revealing a secret in order to humiliate Hayley and get her new husband to possibly break up with her. (It’s very easy to guess what the secret is.) Hayley panics when she sees Marc and demands that he leave, but he refuses.
Hayley’s new husband Roberto (played by Tiziano Caputo), another clueless person in the movie who can’t read body language and nonverbal signals, sees Hayley and Marc having a tense conversation together. Roberto is oblivious to the tension and instead goes over and assumes that Hayley is talking to an old friend.
Hayley tells Roberto that Marc was just about to leave because he showed up uninvited and there isn’t room for him at the wedding reception. But instead, Roberto insists that Marc stay because they can find room for him at a table. Of course, it happens to be the same table where Jack, Dina, Amanda, Chaz, Bryan, Rebecca and Sidney are seated.
But instead of getting security personnel or some other people to remove Marc from the premises, Hayley makes the dumb decision (as one does in stupid movies like this) to enlist Jack’s help by begging Jack to put a strong liquid sedative that she happens to have in her purse and secretly put the drug in Marc’s water glass at the table where they’ll be sitting. Before the guests arrive in the ballroom where the wedding reception takes place, Jack sneaks in and puts some of the sedative in the glass next to Marc’s name card.
After Jack puts the sedative in the water glass and makes a hasty exit from the nearly empty room, a group of young kids who look to be about 5 to 7 years old then suddenly appear and head right to the same table, where they immediately rearrange all the name cards on the table and then immediately leave. It’s the only table in a roomful of tables where these kids pull this prank. Even for an already unrealistic romantic comedy, this pivotal scene has absolutely no credibility whatsoever. “Plan de Table” had at least a more plausible way for the table name cards to be rearranged, since it was the ex-boyfriend who did it.
Of course, the rearrangement of the name cards means that Marc will not be the one who gets drugged with the sedative. In the first half of the movie, Bryan is the one who accidentally gets drugged. In the second half of the movie with the alternate storyline, Jack is the one who accidentally gets drugged.
The ending presented in the first half of the movie is actually pretty morbid, so when the movie’s “oracle” announces that viewers can see how one action can make things turn out in many different ways, you pretty much know by then how the movie will really end. Between the first and second storylines, there’s an unnecessary quick montage showing each scenario that would’ve happened if each person at Jack’s table had ingested the sedative in the drink, before getting to the scenario that Jack is the one who accidentally gets drugged.
Throughout the course of the film, there are plenty of wedding movie clichés, such as an intoxicated person making an embarrassing speech, a mishap with the wedding cake, a big fight, and a wedding guest getting unwanted attention from someone who wants to hook up with that person. And, of course, since the sedative is the catalyst for the “problems” in the movie, the person who ingested the drug becomes incoherent or falls asleep at the wrong times.
The movie also has several illogical aspects in order to set up a slapstick scenario. For example, Bryan is an actor who is Hayley’s “maid/man of honor,” and yet he’s shocked to find out on the day of the wedding that he’s expected to give a wedding speech, so he doesn’t have a speech prepared at all. And even though they are seated at the same table, Jack and Dina are mostly kept apart at the wedding in both storylines, because Jack is too busy running around trying to keeping Marc from ruining the wedding. Jack knows the secret that Marc wants to announce at the wedding, so Jack is frantic about not letting that happen.
In the movie’s first storyline, Dina also gets unwanted attention from Sidney, who’s worn a Scottish kilt and keeps complaining about how much the kilt “chafes” at his genitals. (You can bet this is used for at least one slapstick moment in the movie.) And in the alternate storyline in the second half of the film, it’s the famous Italian movie director Vitelli (played by Paolo Mazzarelli) who zooms in on Dina, which is an obstacle for a heavily drugged Jack to have some quality one-on-one time with Dina.
The biggest problem with this movie is that even in the often-unrealistic genre of romantic comedies, “Love Wedding Repeat” is filled with so many conversations and scenarios that are too phony to take. The people who end up coupling aren’t very believable together. And there are parts of the movie that are very dull. Bryan and Jack aren’t the only ones who fall asleep in this story. You might fall asleep too while watching this movie.
If you’re the kind of person who expects romantic comedies to have a big scene where a person frantically runs to catch up to someone and reveal true feelings before it’s too late, then you’ll be happy to know that “Love Wedding Repeats” delivers on that predictable trope too. It’s unfortunate that the movie’s cast, who are otherwise talented, are saddled with roles and dialogues that are obnoxious or incredibly boring and unoriginal. “Love Wedding Repeat” is a disappointing movie that certainly doesn’t need to be repeated through a remake or a sequel.
Netflix premiered “Love Wedding Repeat” on April 10, 2020.