The Wedding Date
Sunday, July 05, 2015 |
| source: imdb.com |
“A wedding is a sacrament; a joyous celebration of love and commitment, in utopia. In the real world, it’s an excuse to drink excessively and say things you shouldn’t say.” –Nick Mercer (The Wedding Date, 2005)
“I’d
rather fight with you than make love with anyone else.” –Nick Mercer
(The Wedding Date, 2005)
“The
hardest thing is loving someone and then having the courage to let them love
you back. But if you know her shit and she knows yours, and at the end of the
day, if you still would rather give up than try, nothing’s ever going to be
worth it. Maybe think about it this way, you go back, you get to spend the rest
of your life having really great make up sex.” –Nick Mercer (The
Wedding Date, 2005)
Title : The Wedding Date
Director : Clare Kilner
Starring : Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Amy
Adams
Genre : romance, drama, comedy
Distributor : Universal Studios
Release
date : 4 February 2005
Running
time : 90 minutes
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| "The Wedding Date" movie poster - source: imdb.com |
It’s
only the third post for Moments Of Our
Lives part 2, yet I already write the second movie review. Well, count it
as an excuse for not posting any movie review at all during the first part. So,
wedding. How do you feel about a thing called ‘wedding’? (Wait, is that a
thing? Okay, never mind!) What do you think about wedding? Some people say it’s
a celebration of love; a sacred moment when two love birds make a vow to be
together until death do them apart. While some others say it’s just a tool to
strangle the person you think you’re in love with in a commitment for life.
Wow, okay, the latter one sounds creepy, pardon me for that. But, any way it is
that you prefer to think about a wedding, everyone should, no, must, be happy
at a wedding. No matter how hectic it must be during the preparation
(especially if you’re the bride or the groom or a family member), no matter how
uninterested you are for it (especially when you’re a single, well, wedding
sucks for some single people out there), everyone must be happy at a wedding.
 |
| source: imdb.com |
At
least for the sake of the bride and groom, and that’s what Kat Ellis (portrayed
by Debra Messing) trying to do at her younger half sister’s wedding; be happy. Kat
is a single New Yorker who returns to her parents’ house in London to
be the maid of honor at the wedding of her younger half sister, Amy
Ellis (portrayed by Amy Adams). However, the best man of Amy’s
groom-to-be, Edward Fletcher-Wooten (Jack Davenport), is none other than Kat’s
former fiancé, Jeffrey (Jeremy Sheffield), who unexpectedly dumped her two
years ago without any reasonable cause. Anxious about confronting Jeffrey (and also
eager to impress him at the same time), Kat hires suave escort Nick Mercer (portrayed
by Dermot Mulroney) to pose as her boyfriend, as her wedding date. Therefore
the two flies together from New York to London as a fake couple. While Kat is
full of anxiety, on the other hand Nick is so relax and convinces her that
everything is going to be just fine.
Kat
intends to make Jeffrey jealous, but her plan backfires when Nick convinces
everyone, including herself, that they are madly in love. Slow but sure, Kat
doesn’t feel any anxiety or even care anymore for Jeffrey, as she finds herself
falling for Nick. Meanwhile, breaking all the rule of his sidejob as an escort,
Nick also finds himself slowly falling for Kat too. The two even start to fight
and make up like a real couple. But then, only two days prior to the wedding,
Nick discovers a fact that Amy and Jeffrey had an affair when Kat and Jeffrey
were still together; and that was the reason Jeffrey broke his engagement with
Kat two years ago, because he believed he was in love with Amy, yet, Amy turned
Jeffrey down and chose to be with Ed because she loved him. Amy begs Nick to
stay away from it as she has a plan to tell Kat herself about the affair.
However, Jeffrey spills it out to Kat on the night before the wedding day,
spoiling the mood for everyone.
 |
| source: imdb.com |
When
Kat finds out that Nick had already discovered Amy-Jeffrey’s affair (and not
telling her), she feels betrayed and puts Nick off. And that’s when Nick says
to Kat, “Go ahead, Kat, hate me. I think
you’re running out of steam on this whole Jeffrey thing anyhow. Maybe now
you’ll be able to hold on to this long enough to ruin your next relationship.”
Well, it sounds pretty rude, I know. But that’s the ugly truth. “Every woman has the exact love life she
wants.” Again, a quote by Nick. And again, that’s the ugly truth. We’re not
just being single and miserable unless we, whether unconsciously or not, want
ourselves to be single and miserable. When we’re ready to let go, to be
un-single and un-miserable, we will. Instead of the matter of time, it’s more about
the matter of willingness. In Kat’s case, when she decides to hire Nick as her
fake boyfriend, she hasn’t moved on, clearly. And when she shuts Nick off just
because of one simple mistake, and actually, more because of Amy-Jeffrey’s
affair, she unconsciously chooses to not moving on.
However,
meeting Nick makes Kat realizing all of that. That she shouldn’t push Nick away
just because of her sadness and disappointment toward the past. That she should
clear her mind from the haunting past relationship before she decides to move
on and continue with the new relationship. When we’re in relationship, we
should be dealing with the problems that come afterward, not the problems that
we bring along from the previous relationship. There’s no such thing as out of
the blue, and Jeffrey must have his reason for breaking their engagement. It’s not
that Kat couldn’t find it out back then, but it’s just that she didn’t want to.
Because, deep in her conscious mind, she wanted
to be miserably broken. The same thing goes for Amy. If she didn’t mean to hurt
her sister, then why did she choose to betray her? Because, deep in her
conscious mind, she wanted to hurt
her. Perhaps she’s jealous, because Kat is the one who always the most and
number one. Well, everyone needs a drama.
 |
| source: imdb.com |
A drama; the more complicated it is, the merrier. Fortunately, everyone still has enough sanity to make it right in the end. “Every woman has the exact love life she wants.” And thank God, Kat realizes it before it’s too late. Instead of being drowned in grief because she thinks her relationship with Nick is already over and he is already leaving, she chooses to run for it. At this point, she has totally moved on. And more importantly, she won’t repeat the same old mistake she did with Jeffrey back then. She’s not running away anymore when she can ask for explanation and make a negotiation. A relationship is love with negotiation, indeed. Nick, meanwhile, has enough sanity to choose to stay; to make himself understand Kat’s emotional condition. She has been deeply hurt anyway, and it’s not easy for someone like her to open up her heart again. Therefore he decides to give her and himself one more chance. Everything will work out because they want to work it out. The same thing goes for Amy and Ed.
I’m
glad Amy gathers up her courage to tell the truth to Ed before their wedding.
That’s what she must do, though, but I know that’s not easy. So, still, she got
my salute. Kat says to Nick, before she takes him to meet her family, “You know those families where everyone’s out
of their minds, but at the end of the day they’re you family, so you love them?
Mine’s not like that.” Although she says that her family isn’t like that,
the truth is a total opposite. In the end, Amy does the right thing (beside for
the sake of her relationship with Ed) for the sake of her relationship with
Kat. Nevertheless, they’re sisters. She might be out of her mind, but she
understands completely that Kat is her family. And deep in her conscious mind,
she loves her. Ed, on the other hand, has enough sanity to forgive Amy, to see
it in himself that he loves Amy more than he is angry, to realize that the
mistake is all in the past. And I believe that they who choose to stay after
all, are the ones truly worth fighting for. I’ll say it all over again, ones
find love when they find themselves. And once upon a time at a wedding, two
people find themselves through each other.
 |
| source: imdb.com |
“The
Wedding Date” is based on the novel titled “Asking for Trouble”, written by
Elizabeth Young. This romantic comedy film was a financial success, despite
receiving mostly negative reviews from critics. It was even remade
in Bollywood under the title “Aap Ki Khatir”, which also
performed well at box office. It’s not the first time a movie with poor critics
reception meets my fondness. Hell yeah, I won’t blame you to call me cheesy and
sentimental. I must say that Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney play Kat and
Nick characters very well (not to mention that Mr. Mulroney is freaking hot in
as Nick!). And also, Amy and Ed couple is played well too by Amy Adams and Jack
Davenport. They surely don’t lose their light even just as supporting
characters. Oh yeah, and also the trouble-maker asshole, Jeffrey, I have to say
that Jeremy Sheffield does a great job for making me hate this character so
much. Well done with the characters, anyway. And if you love to watch romantic
comedy, then “The Wedding Date” should be on your list.
Kat:
“You
know what pisses me off? I’ve been spilling my guts all weekend and I don’t
know a thing about you.”
Nick:
“I'm
allergic to fabric softener. I majored in comparative literature at Brown. I
hate anchovies. And I think I’d miss you even if we never met.”
(The
Wedding Date, 2005)
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