The British have carved a niche with romantic comedies such as Four Weddings, the Americans have hit comedy gold with scatological humour with Bridesmaids so fuse the two of them together and you’ve got a guaranteed cracker, right? Wrong very, very, very wrong.
This updating of Four Weddings or the truly ghastly Love, Actually is so ill-judged, so badly written and poorly timed, and so wrong in just about every level of its comedy, it’s a thorough waste of the talents on show. It’s not just that the script is unfunny and it is or that the physical gags don’t work they don’t there is a really unpleasant, nasty undercurrent.
It starts with a wedding, and indeed the same gag as Four Weddings, with a stuttering vicar unable to complete the ceremony. Rowan Atkinson did it much better 20 years ago. Rafe Spall and Rose Byrne are the happy couple, while Stephen Merchant is the idiot best man who gives a misjudged speech it’s supposed to make you cringe, and it does but not for reasons to the film’s credit.
Spall plays a writer who has had a hit with a book called Three Months’ which has the same cover as One Day and Byrne is a successful PR. It turns out that although living in extreme comfort, they are not as compatible as they initially thought, and seek help in the form of marriage counsellor Olivia Colman, a bizarre man-hater who spends most of their sessions screaming at her husband on the phone. Maybe it’s this that sums the film up Colman is a superb actor, especially with comedy, so why is she so shrill and shouty? It’s all notched up far higher than it needs to be, and any real jokes are lost in the crudity of it all.
The happy couple’s marriage really hits trouble though when they discover two other people who they seem more compatible with. Byrne gets a PR job with Simon Baker, a rich manufacturer who wants to promote his green credentials. He seems perfect handsome, well dressed, rich and a man who gets a hug from his factory workers every time he goes onto the shop floor. Personally I wouldn’t get tired of punching him, but Byrne seems smitten.
Spall meanwhile spends his time with old flame Anna Faris, and the tedious script tells us they never actually formally split up, just grew apart when she went travelling. Despite appearing to have nothing in common whatsoever, the story tells us they have genuine chemistry and he still cares for her he even brings her a bag of sweeties when she’s upset, which apparently is a declaration of love in these contrived movies.
Faris, in a dreadful wig, suffers arguably the most ill-judged scene of the whole sorry mess, when she, desperate from some contact, has a threesome with a work colleague after the Christmas party. It all gets messy, but this has to be the most badly-choreographed piece of physical comedy in some time, merely embarrassing rather than remotely funny. When she shouts at the remaining couple, “You can’t have sex with your pants still on, it’s the one line of the soggy script that rings true.
The whole film has that irritating glow that suffocated Love, Actually and Four Weddings who are these people living in bespoke flats with scrubbed floors and furniture, wearing lovely clothes and sipping coffee all day while moaning about their sex lives? Each and every one of them needs a damn good shake, which might actually raise a laugh, more than the film does.
Overall verdict: A horrible, unfunny mess of a transatlantic comedy, with zero charm and about as many laughs. Director Dan Mazer seems to badly miss his colleague Sasha Baron Cohen, and has made a big mistake directing his own awful script. A saggy, baggy, tired comedy that will disappear very quickly I give it a week.
Reviewer: Mike Martin