Love. Wedding. Repeat

New to Netflix is Love. Wedding. Repeat. The world right now is a challenging place with so many of us under lockdown restrictions, during these times sometimes what you want from a film is light escapism.. sadly what I got with this was something that made the difficulties of lockdown seem like the humourous escape!

Let’s get this out of the way, I really did not like this, that’s not necessarily the films fault as this type of story are not for me, I’m not a huge fan of “farce” type comedy which normally compromise of a bunch of annoying characters who are unable to make simple choices that would easily avert the next “humourous” mishap, leading to an increasingly unbelievable and frustrating scenario.

This one aims to tell a story about how love and relationships are a random set of circumstances that you either grab or you don’t. Focussed on the wedding of Hayley to her Italian love Roberto, the story centres around Hayley’s brother Jack and a paper thin premise of an unwanted wedding guest and an attempt to stop him spoiling the wedding. Alongside this we see Jack’s bumbling attempts to grab a second chance with a previous brief encounter.

The story is familiar and one that Richard Curtis has made a dozen times before, just better. The premise here never really holds, Sam Claflin’s Jack is a pale Hugh Grant imitation with all of the annoying dithering and inability to avert the ensuing disaster with a couple of simple decisions and the basic sense to explain the circumstances of his odd behaviour to the focus of his attentions.

Although only 100 minutes long it felt about 3 1/2 hours as this charmless story with very limited laughs unfolded. There are a couple of bright spots, a humourous narration (that sounded very much like an uncredited Dame Judi Dench) and a couple of nice performances from Joel Fry and Aisling Bea, but beyond that it is a bit of a turgid mess.

These films done well can be a pleasure, but done badly they are nothing more than unfunny, frustrating nonsense and Love. Wedding. Repeat. Was certainly in the latter camp, self isolation is tough enough, it doesn’t deserve this.