Love, Weddings and Other Disasters (2021) – Uggh

Released: 28th January
Seen: 19th July

So, currently, my home state is going through a lockdown thanks to covid, which means that I’m basically relegated to only reviewing movies I can see from home… and because I’m Australian that means anything that WB releases is not available for streaming down here, so that’s why you’re not seeing a Space Jam 2 review and might not even see a Suicide Squad review (unless I somehow find a way to make HBOMax work from down here which feels like too much effort for those films). This means I’m going to have to review Netflix movies or films that are cheap on Google Plus and that’s what led me to Love, Weddings and Other Disasters which is a film so painfully bad that it makes me regret almost everything in my life up to this exact second.

Love, Weddings and Other Disasters technically involves multiple assorted stories, none of which are well told, but the main one that is the ‘emotional’ backbone of the entire thing revolves around a woman named Jessie (Maggie Grace) who is the star of a viral video involving her parachuting into a wedding, meaning everyone knows her as “The Wedding Trasher”. Somehow, she ends up getting a job planning the wedding for a mayoral candidate and has to prepare the perfect wedding for him. While this is going on, seven other bad side plots happen all on their own that happen to culminate in shenanigans that will technically bring everyone together but explaining all of them would just hurt me so let’s not do that.

I don’t get how Love, Weddings and Other Disasters was permitted to exist, who let this happen? Who allowed actually talented people like Jeremy Irons and Diane Keaton to do this? Who let director Dennis Dugan make this film? Because he shouldn’t be allowed to make films anymore, I don’t even think he should have a Netflix account after his track record (which includes such gems as Jack and Jill, Grown Ups 2 and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry) and this film basically cements that not only can he not make a good comedy but he can’t even write a good joke. Hell, I don’t even think he can write an actual joke because there isn’t a single line here that one could tell was attempting to be a joke, even a failed one. You’d think by random chance one might accidentally type a joke just through sheer dumb luck but nope, that’s not happening here

Everything about Love, Weddings and Other Disasters is heinous, down to the structure of the story. As a story it plays like someone had 5 scripts for completely unrelated Hallmark TV Movies and was carrying them down some stairs, tripped and only had time to pick up 90 pages, thus creating a whole new movie. None of the stories really go together, they have no real link until the last few minutes when they all get into a violent car accident that’s meant to resemble a finale.

On top of that, none of the stories being told is even remotely interesting, I don’t care about the stupid Tour Guide looking for a woman with a glass clipper tattoo, the game show plot is boring (which it shouldn’t be because it involves a Russian hooker and the mafia!) and the random street busker feels like an afterthought that they shoved in when Jesse McCartney realised he could do better things with his life and didn’t turn up for a shoot day so they replaced him with an extra who they retroactively worked into the film. Every side plot feels badly thought out and, most importantly, uninteresting and unfunny.

Unfunny is the kind term for Love, Weddings and Other Disasters, actively irritating might be more accurate. When I say that NONE of the jokes work, please don’t take that to be a suggestion that they didn’t try. Oh, they are trying, Diane Keaton is trying her hardest to make the “Blind person bumps into everything” bit work but it never does (sidebar, why does Diane Keaton need to do these kinds of movies? First Book Club, then Poms, now this? She’s a goddamn icon and an Oscar winner so why isn’t anyone giving her better material?). Jeremy Irons is trying hard to make the “Stuffy asshole is pedantic about everything” bit work, but it never does. Every actor is trying so hard to make the one joke that they’ve got work but no matter what they try it doesn’t work which leads to painful scenes where you can see the joke that they’re trying to get across and see it dying a thousand deaths.

Not only is Love, Weddings and Other Disasters unfunny but the plotlines have literally no stakes whatsoever. The wedding is never in jeopardy, nothing falls through at the last minute, there’s no tension of any kind. It’s honestly impressive how there can be 5 different plots going on at the same time and none of them matters in any way or has anything interesting happening. No one is in any way different at the end of Love, Weddings and Other Disasters than they were at the start, not in any way that matters. Film stories really should have the main characters grow or change in some way, that’s kind of why we watch them but leave it to this film to show you can somehow have a 90-minute film with five plots going on where absolutely nothing happens.

Love, Weddings and Other Disasters is bad, it’s bad enough that it makes the concept of dying single seem like a better option than taking part in anything that is happening in this film. It’s soulless, unfunny and pathetic in ways I should’ve expected from this director. It is, to be kind about it, fucking awful and I wish to never see this filmmaker’s name adorning any piece of cinema ever again so long as I live.