The Wedding Date
Director: Clare Kilner
Writer: Dana Fox
Based on: Elizabeth Young‘s novel Asking for Trouble
Cast: Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Amy Adams, Jack Davenport, Sarah Parish, Jeremy Sheffield, Peter Egan, Holland Taylor
Seen on: 19.10.2019

Content Note: whoremisia

Plot:
Kat (Debra Messing) is single and has been since she was dumped by her ex-fiancé Jeff (Jeremy Sheffield). When her sister Amy (Amy Adams) is about to marry Edward (Jack Davenport) and none other than Jeff is the Best Man, Kat is determined that she will not show up at the wedding single. Since she doesn’t have a boyfriend, she decides to hire escort Nick (Dermot Mulroney) for duration of the wedding. But her ploy for appearance’s sake quickly becomes more.

The Wedding Date feels like a film that lost a bit too much on the cutting room floor, and what remains is mostly whoremisic shit. The more I thought about the film, the angrier I got about it.

I will say this for The Wedding Date: it is one of the rare examples of a hetero RomCom where I can perfectly understand why the woman would fall for the man, but not why the man would fall for the woman. That is a nice change of pace – usually, when it’s not chemistry everywhere, it’s inexplicable why someone would fall for the guy.

But honestly, that is very little that the film has going for it, and it is inextricably linked to the fact that Kat is an asshole who treats Nick like shit and feels she has the right to do so because she hired him. And because he is an escort, and if we’re being honest, Kat actually disapproves of sex work and of Nick. Wow, what a catch for him. It’s no surprise that it seemed to me that his feelings for her come out of nowhere.

As I said before, I did get the feeling that there was more material here that didn’t make it into the film but that would have made it rounder. Maybe that’s actually the case, maybe it’s the result of being adapted from a novel (that I haven’t read).

In any case, the film didn’t give me what I wanted from a RomCom, despite Mulroney’s obvious and easy appeal. It just gave me anger.

Summarizing: just no.