like dental work....

Rating: 1/10 (22 August 2005)

Since the film came and went faster than Mike Tyson's fortunes, I'm not revealing anything that will ruin it for you, because only the opening credits will fail to disappoint you.
When one bills a film as a comedy, the crowd brings a certain expectation into the theater, and that expectation was not met by this clinker. Stephen King novels have more laughs than this film.
Let's start off with the first big guffaw, the death of Liam Neeson's wife. Neeson is painfully incapable of finishing the eulogy then spends the next ten minutes trying to explain the inexplicable to his son. At that point I asked my date if this was a comedy or a modern remake of Hamlet with the loss of a wife inserted for the loss of his father? I was hissed into silence by someone wearing a black duster and an air of importance.
Laura Linney was next in the docket. Her special agony was an institutionalized brother for whom she was responsible, whose constant calls and cries for attention kept her from ever having a relationship. The echoes down the emotional hall were so insistent that she couldn't even get a leg up after a boozy holiday party. She ached from disappointment, and we ached for her. I nodded to the know it all in the duster, because I just knew that Neelson' eulogy was not the funny part and Laura Linney's personal hell was not the funny part, the funny part was on the way.
You know the English... their humor is subdued. I was being set up for a Monty Python second act. Or so I thought...
It was Emma Thompson's turn take her fair share of holiday abuse. Blessed with this wonderful woman and beautiful children and a terrific job, her husband ignores all that and decides to chuck it all for an office trollop. He goes shopping and brings home a piece of jewelry that Emma discovers in his coat pocket, assumes it's for her, but there's no joy on Xmas eve... the jewelry is not under the tree, it's destined for another and Emma's heart ends up in the punch bowl. Her agony outstrips Laura Linney's. I could go on, but let's just say that the laughs never started.
The writer/director lurches into his third act by calling a perfectly fine young lady a "cow" because she was not pencil thin - something my date bristled at - then tried to redeem himself by having Hugh Grant - as the PM - go door to door in a working class neighborhood looking for her. He accompanies the family to a Xmas play where he steals a kiss behind the curtains and gets caught in mid-smooch when the curtains open. What a device. What a surprise. I was more surprised the eighth time I saw "Our Town" at the middle school down the street.
Did you forget about Liam Neeson's family? The writer almost did, then he realized that he'd needed to tidy up. He had Liam's son develop a thing for an American teenager in London, and of course he has a case of lock jaw when he's around her. Somehow the kid recovers his will and races through Heathrow to catch up to her and reveals his heart before the Xmas bells stop pealing. Bet you never saw that coming...
To sum up, there was very little romance and even less comedy. For a romantic comedy, that's a problem.
Four Weddings and a Funeral was a good film. With all due respect given to the writer's considerable and previously demonstrated talents, this was as poorly conceived and poorly written as any film I've ever seen.