Review- Christmas Wedding Planner
With fair warning, this could be less of a review than a glimpse into the descent into madness I suffered a few days ago but hey, let's see what happens by the end.
Before I start, let me explain to you why I even watched this film. I'm in the middle of a last minute dash to watch a bunch of stuff for my best of the year list (coming next Tuesday) and I've also dedicated the last couple of days watching Christmas films because hey, even I love Christmas. This film, Christmas Wedding Planner, fit the bill of both, was on Netflix and I'd also heard it was bad in a really fun way so I though "what the hell" and put it on. Ninety minutes later, I emerged a different man. What I had just seen was kind of incredibly bad and it was hard to comprehend everything. In fact, five minutes in, I realised I needed to write a blog post on it and starting making notes to try and hold. I've also realised that just explaining why I even approached this film has taken up a paragraph so I'm going to get into the plot in a new paragraph in a second but with the warning that I could go long on this. I have a lot to say.
Main character Kelsey (whose name I had to look up) is a budding wedding planner whose first assignment is planning her cousin Emily's wedding. While at an event for Emily, she meets the hot guy (Connor) she bumped into at the cafe from the first scene and who took the last blueberry scone. It turns out he's not just Emily's ex-boyfriend from about ten years ago but also a private investigator, hired to investigate Emily's fiance. Much of the film from there (to try and distil it down) is Emily and Connor doing wedding stuff while also trying to spy on various members of Emily's fiance's family and would you believe it, they start to fall in love. The biggest lead in their investigation is the lady who works at the dress shop who they think Emily's fiance may be having an affair with because she shows cleavage and is therefore clearly some sinful temptress. It turns out that's not true, he just asked her on a date because they were old friends BUT it turns out he was a dick. At the wedding, it is revealed that he is actually having an illegitimate child with one of his family's maids. Obviously, this tears Emily apart but fortunately, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Connor reveals that he was paid to be a private investigator by Emily's dead dad who originally paid him to leave Emily ten years ago. It is also at this moment that Connor professes his love for Kelsey and proposes to her so as not to waste the wedding. They kiss and live happily ever after, Kelsey carrying on her wedding planning business, Connor continuing running his restaurant which I didn't mention until now because it was entirely irrelevant. As a reminder, that was the film about a woman planning her cousin's wedding.
Predictably, the acting is all awful here because this film is (I'm pretty sure) a TV movie and that means TV grade acting. What it also means is that everyone on screen has to be generically attractive and do little else. As such, you could stop paying attention for a second, look back at the screen and have no idea if the charming, generically attractive, sweater wearing white folk on screen are the ones you looked away from or not. It's why I find it funny that the only character who dares show off her attractiveness a bit by showing some cleavage (and honestly, it isn't even a lot, I was just very bored and the change in neckline caught me off guard) is immediately considered untrustworthy. Sure, she's eventually fine but it's classic America that blatant sexuality is punished and now we're going down the route of one of my film essays so I'll stop this tangent. Acting wise, I haven't got anything else to talk about so I want to talk about the characters. Or rather, how they don't really exist. Our main character Kelsey is defined by quirkiness like all Christmas TV movie leads and we can tell this because there's one scene where she eats cereal out of a mug. HILARIOUS. Connor, the PI, is sweet but also hot and that's the extent of his personality. The worst offenders are the bridesmaids. When they're introduced, they're defined as being either jealous, clumsy or bitter and the joke appears to be that they do that in all the scenes. Instead, the joke is that I went on IMDb after and found out that their names are literally just "Jealous Bridesmaid", "Bitter Bridesmaid" and "Clumsy Bridesmaid". With character depth like this, it makes sense why I spent the whole film questioning whether the the makers of this film hate women or hate men and settled on probably both.
It's hard to know what else to talk about. One of the most baffling things about the film is the plot which I've already covered and I also couldn't stand the cast which, again, I've covered. With all that's left, I think I'll talk about the general film making, much as using that phrase is an insult to most other films ever made. Technical aspects then, and sound is what immediately jumps to my mind. All of the music is about as cheesy and basic and as royalty free as it gets which is understandable, this being a cheap movie. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is that because the same tracks keep getting played, I started to go a little insane. On a similar note, I started to notice that all the dialogue seemed to start with noises instead of words. What I mean by that is people always seemed to say "Um" or "Ah" or make other throat noises before starting their dialogue and, again, it really began to bug me. Visually too, this film cannot help but feel exceptionally cheap. You know that cliche where two people are sitting in a car and you can see that it's clearly green screen from the windows next to them? Handily, that's all avoided by just shooting straight on, while the characters are in a van. Save on green screen, make your film feel really cheap! There's one scene that does have baffling green screen however which is just outside the church. For whatever reason, the dialogue scene cuts between Connor, who is clearly outside the church, and Kelsey, who is clearly on a green screen. That they couldn't even be bothered to put the actress on set again for even a few minutes is emblematic of what a lazy and kind of insulting production this is and that's all I really want to say.
I'm done. You know, I had some enjoyment watching this film because of how exceptionally bad it is but having to actually sit down and write about what is wrong with it has brought out the bad side of me. If you want a hilariously bad film to watch with friends next year, I think this is a solid contender but honestly, it's just very shit and deserves nothing more than a
Before I start, let me explain to you why I even watched this film. I'm in the middle of a last minute dash to watch a bunch of stuff for my best of the year list (coming next Tuesday) and I've also dedicated the last couple of days watching Christmas films because hey, even I love Christmas. This film, Christmas Wedding Planner, fit the bill of both, was on Netflix and I'd also heard it was bad in a really fun way so I though "what the hell" and put it on. Ninety minutes later, I emerged a different man. What I had just seen was kind of incredibly bad and it was hard to comprehend everything. In fact, five minutes in, I realised I needed to write a blog post on it and starting making notes to try and hold. I've also realised that just explaining why I even approached this film has taken up a paragraph so I'm going to get into the plot in a new paragraph in a second but with the warning that I could go long on this. I have a lot to say.
Main character Kelsey (whose name I had to look up) is a budding wedding planner whose first assignment is planning her cousin Emily's wedding. While at an event for Emily, she meets the hot guy (Connor) she bumped into at the cafe from the first scene and who took the last blueberry scone. It turns out he's not just Emily's ex-boyfriend from about ten years ago but also a private investigator, hired to investigate Emily's fiance. Much of the film from there (to try and distil it down) is Emily and Connor doing wedding stuff while also trying to spy on various members of Emily's fiance's family and would you believe it, they start to fall in love. The biggest lead in their investigation is the lady who works at the dress shop who they think Emily's fiance may be having an affair with because she shows cleavage and is therefore clearly some sinful temptress. It turns out that's not true, he just asked her on a date because they were old friends BUT it turns out he was a dick. At the wedding, it is revealed that he is actually having an illegitimate child with one of his family's maids. Obviously, this tears Emily apart but fortunately, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Connor reveals that he was paid to be a private investigator by Emily's dead dad who originally paid him to leave Emily ten years ago. It is also at this moment that Connor professes his love for Kelsey and proposes to her so as not to waste the wedding. They kiss and live happily ever after, Kelsey carrying on her wedding planning business, Connor continuing running his restaurant which I didn't mention until now because it was entirely irrelevant. As a reminder, that was the film about a woman planning her cousin's wedding.
Predictably, the acting is all awful here because this film is (I'm pretty sure) a TV movie and that means TV grade acting. What it also means is that everyone on screen has to be generically attractive and do little else. As such, you could stop paying attention for a second, look back at the screen and have no idea if the charming, generically attractive, sweater wearing white folk on screen are the ones you looked away from or not. It's why I find it funny that the only character who dares show off her attractiveness a bit by showing some cleavage (and honestly, it isn't even a lot, I was just very bored and the change in neckline caught me off guard) is immediately considered untrustworthy. Sure, she's eventually fine but it's classic America that blatant sexuality is punished and now we're going down the route of one of my film essays so I'll stop this tangent. Acting wise, I haven't got anything else to talk about so I want to talk about the characters. Or rather, how they don't really exist. Our main character Kelsey is defined by quirkiness like all Christmas TV movie leads and we can tell this because there's one scene where she eats cereal out of a mug. HILARIOUS. Connor, the PI, is sweet but also hot and that's the extent of his personality. The worst offenders are the bridesmaids. When they're introduced, they're defined as being either jealous, clumsy or bitter and the joke appears to be that they do that in all the scenes. Instead, the joke is that I went on IMDb after and found out that their names are literally just "Jealous Bridesmaid", "Bitter Bridesmaid" and "Clumsy Bridesmaid". With character depth like this, it makes sense why I spent the whole film questioning whether the the makers of this film hate women or hate men and settled on probably both.
It's hard to know what else to talk about. One of the most baffling things about the film is the plot which I've already covered and I also couldn't stand the cast which, again, I've covered. With all that's left, I think I'll talk about the general film making, much as using that phrase is an insult to most other films ever made. Technical aspects then, and sound is what immediately jumps to my mind. All of the music is about as cheesy and basic and as royalty free as it gets which is understandable, this being a cheap movie. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is that because the same tracks keep getting played, I started to go a little insane. On a similar note, I started to notice that all the dialogue seemed to start with noises instead of words. What I mean by that is people always seemed to say "Um" or "Ah" or make other throat noises before starting their dialogue and, again, it really began to bug me. Visually too, this film cannot help but feel exceptionally cheap. You know that cliche where two people are sitting in a car and you can see that it's clearly green screen from the windows next to them? Handily, that's all avoided by just shooting straight on, while the characters are in a van. Save on green screen, make your film feel really cheap! There's one scene that does have baffling green screen however which is just outside the church. For whatever reason, the dialogue scene cuts between Connor, who is clearly outside the church, and Kelsey, who is clearly on a green screen. That they couldn't even be bothered to put the actress on set again for even a few minutes is emblematic of what a lazy and kind of insulting production this is and that's all I really want to say.
I'm done. You know, I had some enjoyment watching this film because of how exceptionally bad it is but having to actually sit down and write about what is wrong with it has brought out the bad side of me. If you want a hilariously bad film to watch with friends next year, I think this is a solid contender but honestly, it's just very shit and deserves nothing more than a
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