Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Perhaps by the time she turns fifty, Isla Fisher, who is thirty two at the time of this writing, might not look like a super cute sixteen year old anymore. But then Sally Field is like sixty something and she STILL has traces of Gidget and The Flying Nun floating around in there. Anyway, the lovely Ms. Fisher is the female of concern in this wacky little zany Romantic Comedy ‘Wedding Daze’, which when taken as a whole really isn’t all that great of a movie, but it does have some inspired comic moments locked up within its running time which should make you laugh.

Anderson (Jason Biggs) loves Vanessa (Audra Blaser) and has decided to put on a pair of angel wings, a pink thong and grease up with baby oil to propose to her at a crowded restaurant, despite the vehement protestations of his best friend Ted (Michael Weston). Anderson goes through with his sick plan anyway which causes the lovely Vanessa to seize up and die of a heart attack. Now a miserable wreck of man, Anderson trudges through life, losing his job, most of his possessions and his friends with the exception of the loyal Ted who does his best to urge Anderson to jump back into life. On a whim, partially to get Ted off his back, Anderson asks the waitress at the diner they eating at to marry him. This woman, Katie (Fisher), is having her own issues as her dentist boyfriend has just proposed to her and unfortunately he’s not really ringing her bells despite the fact her mom thinks he’s a great catch and he’s really good at charades. So impulsively she says yes to the marriage proposal from this dude she’s never met before this moment, which will require these two hopeful lovebirds to get to know each other and theoretically allow for some hilarity to ensue.

Since this is a wacky comedy, it is necessary for it to have some wacky characters such as Katie’s workmates Matador (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Jane (Heather Goldenhersh) who are hopeful circus carnies, or Katie’s dad Smitty (Joe Pantoliano) who’s a career criminal doing a lengthy stretch upstate for crimes unknown. Anderson

has his own crew of wackos, particularly his swinging parents played by Edward Hermann and Margo Martindale. The main issue is that Anderson continues to remain faithful to his dead girlfriend, despite the fact that she’s dead, despite Jane’s overt sexual overtures, despite how karazy hot Jane is, which causes complications in their efforts to get familiar with one and another and become one person under the eyes of God. Fortunately for us there will be a road trip which will include every single wacky person in this movie, plus a few more wacky people we will meet along the way, including Rob Coddry who we have already determined to be a comic genius, all under one roof in Las Vegas no less which should create some glorious opportunities for laughter as we hope for only best for our pair of star crossed lovebirds.

‘Wedding Daze’ or ‘In the pleasure of your Company’ as it was originally called before some executive at MGM decided to go for some of that cherished ‘National Lampoon Presents…’ type action, which is ALWAYS as bad idea, plays a lot like a sketch comedy show. This is not unexpected since the films director Michael Ian Black does a lot sketch comedy performing and writing. And like your typical sketch comedy show some of the stuff here is really funny and some of isn’t funny at all, but none of it, even the funny parts, are stitched together in a way that adds up to make for a good movie. It’s almost as if Black thought up a bunch of scenes that he thought would be funny and then worked backwards from there to create the rather lame narrative that surrounds the occasionally funny stuff that is contained in his movie.

Nothing much was ever really done with any of the characters to give any sort of real affinity towards them, particularly Biggs character who was a fairly unlikable and unpleasant dude even before his girlfriend died. There was also nothing in Fisher’s character which allowed you to understand really why she agreed to marry this guy, even less after she got to know him, thus making her gay charades loving ex-boyfriend appearing all the more charming when compared the loathsome character of Anderson, with the plan being Jason Biggs to rely on his ‘charm’ and Ilsa Fisher to rely on her cuteness to get them by. It didn’t work. Some of the peripheral characters, particularly Ebon Ross-Bachrach’s Matador and Michael Weston’s Ted were more interesting to watch than the stars of the movie, and of course, despite the one-note of his character, Joe Pantoliano was funny as the criminalistic dad. No, criminalistic is not a real word.

Like I said, ‘Wedding Daze’ isn’t a very good movie and it’s probably a terrible movie truth be told, but it did make me laugh on more than one occasion and Isla Fisher is terribly cute. Probably not enough to warrant a recommendation, but it is something.

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