Love, Wedding, Repeat – Film Review
While trying to ensure that his sister’s wedding day goes smoothly, Jack (Sam Claflin) finds himself juggling an angry ex-girlfriend, an uninvited guest with a secret, a misplaced sleep sedative, and the girl that got away — as alternate versions of the same wedding unfold, Jack seeks his own happy ending with chance dictating his future.
Dean Craig’s Love Wedding Repeat is yet another romance movie that you probably had no interest in seeing just by looking at the trope-filled poster and synopsis. Released straight to Netflix this past Friday, the new film is being watched by a high number of people, likely due to the fact that nearly everybody in the world is in quarantine right now.
Surely this movie isn’t in the charts on the streaming platform right now because of the film’s quality, because it is a bad movie that has nothing interesting or exciting to say. It’s more proof that a large portion of romance movies these days are incredibly boring.
For the first thirty to forty minutes in Love Wedding Repeat, virtually nothing happens. Literally. We witness lead protagonist Jack get into an awkward conversation with his love interest Dina (Olivia Munn) when his friend Bryan (Joel Fry) happens to intervene. This entire sequence lasts about ten minutes when really, it should have only lasted a few minutes. From that point onwards, it just gets more boring by the minute.
Eleanor Tomlinson (left) as Hayley and Jack Farthing (right) as Marc in Love Wedding Repeat (2020).
The screenplay here by Craig is not only the most dry and uninvesting script of the entire year so far, but it is one of the most dull scripts in years. Look, I have seen some tragically boring and bad films over the past few years. But this one is on a whole other level. None of the characters are developed enough for us to genuinely care about them and their goals. They all just have their own little quirks and as a result, we have characters that feel incredibly one-note and generic.
All of the characters end up going in directions that are so predictable that it’s not even funny. I am willing to bet that the majority of people that go ahead and watch this movie will be able to predict the ending a mile away.
But, I must admit, the acting on display from the whole cast is actually quite great. They give their all in a movie that clearly doesn’t deserve their hard work and effort. Out of the large cast though, the best performances come from Sam Claflin and Olivia Munn, who have excellent chemistry with one another and feel authentic and excited to be a part of this movie.
In addition, the cinematography by Hubert Taczanowski is greatly pleasing to look at. Everything is framed extremely well and nothing looks bland or lifeless. It’s an incredibly lively looking picture. It’s just a shame that the rest of the movie was exactly that – bland, lifeless, and generic.
With a dull and tragically boring script, Love Wedding Repeat is a predictable, trope-filled romance film executed poorly.
Overall Grade: D+
MPAA Rating: TV-MA
Cast: Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn, Eleanor Tomlinson, Joel Fry, Tim Key, Aisling Bea, Jack Farthing, Allan Mustafa, Freida Pinto, Paolo Mazzarelli, Tiziano Caputo
Directed by: Dean Craig
Distributed by: Netflix
Release Date: April 10, 2020
Running Time: 100 minutes