Rick’s Flicks Picks » This Weekend’s Film Festival Celebrates Weddings

This Weekend’s Film Festival Celebrates Weddings

24 09 2008

Wedding Wish #1: May your spouse’s love be as unconditional as your parents’.

So my little baby sister is getting married. It’s time to celebrate at Rick’s Flicks Picks. So weddings and love are the themes of This Weekend’s Film Festival. Some are satirical. Some are romantic. We get looks at love and marriage from the U.S., Australia, U.K. and India. This is a lineup for romantics and cynics alike. It celebrates all the ups and downs of making it to that Big Day. And for each film I’ll send out wishes for every bride.

We start this week with a classic. The original 1950 FATHER OF THE BRIDE takes a satirical stab at weddings from the point of view of Spencer Tracy’s sarcastic Stanley T. Banks. His daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) is getting married to a man he doesn’t even know. And he has trouble dealing with losing his little girl, while the wedding bill rises and all his role becomes is the bill payer. As I said in my original review, “Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett truly deserved their nominations for best writing, screenplay… Wedding conventions are tackled with wonderful wit, which balances the frank sentiment.” Tracy is magnificent in this Oscar-nominated performance in which he perfectly balances the humor and the heartfelt emotion. All fathers who are close to their daughters and visa versa will find this film special in the way it portrays with honesty the bond between a dad and his little girl.

Wedding Wish #2: May the Big Day be as wonderful as the fantasy.

MURIEL’S WEDDING comes to the Festival from Down Under. Toni Collette’s star making turn as Muriel Heslop is part of a comic ode to the oddball, in all of us, who just wants to find someone special to share their life with. Escaping from the cruelty of reality, Muriel fills her days with fantasy and Abba songs. She often lies to make her life seem better than it really is and reality always has a way of creeping back in. She dreams of the perfect wedding day — the one that will show all those snobs that treated her poorly. Director/writer P.J. Hogan crafts a hilarious tale that includes a current of sadness underneath. As I said in my original review, “Hogan balances broad comedy, subtle satire and painful melodrama all in the same film.” How the characters react to the unexpected bumps in the road allows them to grow and redefine what “happily ever after” really means to them.

Wedding Wish #3: May your first marriage end at a funeral.

FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL brings in some British satirical wit. Charles, played in a wonderfully bumbling performance by Hugh Grant, is of that age when he and his friends are always attending weddings. Mike Newell’s droll comedy presents a large cast of characters skipping from one blessed day to the next, wondering who will be the next to walk down that aisle. At the first wedding, Charles meets the American Carrie (Andie MacDowell) and it seems like love at first sight. But a wedding hook up isn’t a surefire thing for sure. As I said in my original review, “[The film] really doesn’t follow the typical [romantic comedy] formula of boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy and girl fall apart and boy and girl come back together (most often having to run somewhere to meet up).” Charles worries about love, and with his large group of friends he gets a lot of opinions on the matter — some of them idyllic, some of them pragmatic, some of them cynical. In the end, we find that the real love story has a bit of all of those points of view.

Wedding Wish #4: May the Big Day be as vibrant as a Bollywood production.

For the closing doubleheader, the first leg takes us to India. Mira Nair’s vibrant MONSOON WEDDING is a grand tale about love across economic and cultural boundaries. Centering on the preparation for an arranged marriage, the film explores the melding of traditional Indian culture with Western ideals. Mixing romance, melodrama and wonderful Indian music, this multi-language production shows us how an arranged marriage between a native and an Indian living in the States can work. Moreover, in the romance between a maid and the wedding planner, we witness the innocence of love. MONSOON WEDDING shows audiences all over the world how weddings and love are universal experiences, even with the differences in our traditions. As I said in my original review, “If you want to put a smile on your face and feel like you’ve taken a comfortable trip to a far off land, watch this film.”

Wedding Wish #5: May your marriage be like a Jane Austen romance.

So if all Jane Austen’s stories end with a wedding then I guess ending this lineup with a Jane Austen story is quite appropriate. SENSE & SENSIBILITY is a romance story that shades humor over every element, making the story more delightful and human. Emma Thompson, who won an Oscar for her adapted screenplay, takes on the role of Elinor, the oldest sister of three, who must look after her family with a level head when they are put out of their family estate by their step-brother’s greedy new wife Fanny (Harriet Walter). Elinor keeps her feelings close at hand, but can’t hide her emotions completely toward Fanny’s brother Edward (Hugh Grant). Her sister Marianne is her complete opposite. She ignores the romantic gestures of the dry Col. Brandon (Alan Rickman) for the brash advances of the handsome romantic John Willoughby (Greg Wise). Ang Lee made his English-language debut on this Oscar-nominated film, balancing the drama with the wit perfectly. Austen, Thompson and Lee approach love in the story from both a sentimental and practical point of view. And as I said in my original review, “It’s a love story, but not a ‘love story.’”

Now that the ceremony is done, please share your favorite wedding-themed films in the comments below. I hope you enjoy this lineup. So for your invitation to This Weekend’s Film Festival, head to the local video store, update the rental queue, check out Zap2It.com for TV listings or help support the site by buying the films on DVD at the links below.