Blu Ray Review: Love Wedding Marriage (2011)

posted on
01.28.2013

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MSRP 29.98
RATED PG-13
STUDIO IFC Films
RUNNING TIME 90 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES

• Trailer

The Pitch
Mandy Moore stars as Ava, a newlywed who has it all: a successful career as a top marriage counselor, a hot husband and the answers to everything. But when she finds out that her parents are getting a divorce and her hubby has neglected to mention his first wife, Ava’s perfect world begins to crumble. Is love little more than a fairy tale or is marriage really just an institution for the committed?

The Humans

Dermot Mulroney (director), Mandy Moore, Kellan Lutz, James Brolin , Jane Seymour and Jessica Szohr

The Nutshell
90 minutes of modern Sandler like comedy that has something to do with marriage and therapy.

The Lowdown

The worst type of movie is a movie that attempts to be something that is miserably fails to become. Behind Love Wedding Marriage is a good moral message that comes to be by destroying everything needed to make it effective. I really have nothing good to say about it, other than it was nice seeing real life married couple Alyson Hannigan and Alexis Denisof sharing actual screen time (they play a married couple as opposed to both just having roles on How I Met Your Mother).

What do you mean, you didn’t like it?

I’m not going to worry about general plot spoilers, as that is so much of what needs to be discussed. If I had any positive things to say, I may, but I feel it is my job to allow you to avoid the 90 minutes of soul rot disguised as romantic comedy that I just experienced. I wouldn’t wish that on Ray Lewis, and if you follow my NFL column you know he is definitely not a friend of mine.

The film uses every cheap and thoughtless attempt at humor that it can find. While the thought during the beginning part is this is nothing worse than an Adam Sandler romance, it soon becomes apparent that all the sappiness and ridiculous loving couples are a ploy. While trying to force feed the idea of be selfish and take care of yourself, the film somehow finds a way to make all the characters less human as more screen time is seen.

Isn’t this the part where she runs off with a guy on roller skates?

What is the actual plot? Some dumb story about a newlywed marriage counselor whose parents are divorcing. She proceeds to use cheap humor, bad storylines and outrageous scenarios to bring them back together while distancing herself from her sex obsessed, ken doll cut out of a husband. Somewhere in there we have a dumb unwanted sister who experienced a sexual awakening while incognito somewhere in Mexico and the blockhead’s best friend who marries a sexual toy disguised as a Polish Immigrant.

By the way, speaking of the immigrant side story, did any research into immigration happen or did it sound funny to just speak out their ass? The idea that a girl was going to be deported in a week, so they marry for her to say is ridiculous. Maybe pre-2001, but this was filmed in 2011. All joking aside, it took half a year to enable my wife, who I knew prior, to gain her fiance’ visa, let alone the bankroll spent to do it. This somehow happens in a span of two days in the movie.

My son doesn’t choose better movies than I do!!

Talk about not doing research. Any film student would be able to use this film as a template for what not to do when blocking a shot. At times, Love Wedding Marriage screams of stage production that accidentally got filmed. There might as well have been a neon sign that flashed “You stand here!” The film was directed by Dermot Mulroney, and while I have enjoyed him as an actor, please learn from this. It wasn’t good.

One last side note. For whoever told Kellan Lutz from Twillight that he is an actor with a wide range of emotions. He may be a pretty face but he makes Taylor Lautner look like Javier Bardem. Stick to the little girl movies.