Wedding Date, The (2005) Zero stars

Directed by Clare Kilner. Script by Dana Fox from Elizabeth Young's book "Asking for Trouble." Photography, Oliver Curtis. Editing, Mary Finlay. Production design, Tom Burton. Music, Blake Neely. Producers, Nathalie Marciano, Michelle Chydzik Sowa, Jessica Bendinger, Paul Brooks. A Universal Pictures/Gold Circle Films release. 90 minutes. PG-13 (for sexual content) . Cast: Kat Ellis =Debra Messing ----- Nick Mercer = Dermot Mulroney----- Amy Ellis =Amy Adams ------ Jeffrey = Jeremy Sheffield-------Victor Ellis = Peter Egan-------- TJ = Sarah Parish------- Edward Fletcher-Wooten =Jack Davenport

I know nothing about the film's director and its writer—both seem to be

newcomers. I also know little about Debra Messing who, for some years,

has been the female star of the TV series "Will & Grace" for which she now

receives $250.000 per episode. Apparently "W & G" began in 1988, was

successful originally, but is now in decline, judging from viewers reactions.

It's not that I don't watch TV, but my preferences go to the movies shown

without commercials –Sundance, TCM, etc, and to channels such as PBS,

Biography, History, and such.

TWD (The Wedding Date) joins the many –and mostly quite successful

--movies with the word "Wedding" in the title. The current item, however,

is a fiasco, or, in different parlance "a dog." (That expression has almost

vanished from the American language, no doubt because the love of dogs

(canines) rightly and gradually won a lot of ground.)

In TWD, Ms. Messing is Kat Ellis. That Kat is no dog but a mature woman

who looks much younger than Ms. Messing's real age. Kat is a single

Manhattanite who has to fly to London for the wedding of her younger

half-sister (and half-brained) Amy. We are given to understand that Kat's

immediate family, i.e. UK-born (?) Amy, Mom (an American) and Kat's

stepfather (a Brit) inhabit London.

To backtrack a bit, Kat, in New York, has a semi-fit as she does not want to

be single when she meets, in London, the Brit fellow who had dumped her

two years earlier, for reasons we shall never learn. She (Kat) wants to

show him that she is desirable and the proof of this pudding will be to come

to England with a boy-friend. To procure such a man she contacts an escort

service, hires Nick (Mulroney) for $6,000 cash, gets him a seat on the

plane to London. It would also seem that Kat works for a U.K. outfit –I bet

you it is the Virgin Airlines. The adjoining seats on the plane are very

strange, but then what do I know of first-class? He has a carry-on case;

she has a pyramid of matching luggage. Among the host of wrong details,

he could have used one more case and she many fewer ones.

The deal with Nick is No Sex Please (I'm part British). And of course the

dumbest filmgoer realizes that sex must/will eventually be commited. In

London, all the women in Kat & Co.'s entourage are salivating for Nick. The

loudest of Kat's loud femme-friends is called TJ and when ooh-aahing after

Nick she exclaims to Kat "Oh my God, I think I've just come!"

I will stop here before my computer explodes in disgust. The movie, totally

free of originality, surprises or intelligence, wanders about-- though it does

also zoom on Nick going to the shower (of the room he shares with Kat,

courtesy of her family) and coming out of it. You guess what happens –and

without pills or contraceptives. I forget when exactly TJ discusses Nick's

buns as "fresh out of the oven," but you get the idea.

Whether or not planned, the Kat-Nick relation becomes a copy (a

disastrous one) of the movie "Pretty Woman" with the occupations

reversed. Nick is by trade a male prostitute – and the movie vainly tries to

keep our attention away from this. Whom do they think they're kidding?

The picture's plot (and I do not mean the one awaiting it in a movie

cemetery) not only makes no sense but could be used as a "no-no" for

aspiring film-makers or else in a class-action by viewers who felt cheated.