Throw Pretty Woman and My Best Friend’s Wedding into a blender and what do you get?
I’ll put it as succinctly as I can. Kat is a successful woman who’s only missing one thing in her life – a relationship. After being jilted by her fiancé years earlier, she’s remained single. A phone call from her sister in London only complicates things for Kat. Her sister is getting married and Kat’s ex, Jeffrey, will be the best man. Desperate to show up looking successful, happy and most definitely not-single, Kat hires a charming male escort after reading an article about “paying for a date”. It only costs her a pittance. $6,000 is a small price to pay to appear as you wish to be, right?
If you have seen Pretty Woman, if you have seen My Best Friend’s Wedding, then you know right where this movie is going. You can predict all the plot points, you can predict all the conflict. All of the romance movie clichés are out in full-force, as Kat’s got the annoying, spoiled sister and the brash best friend who says obnoxious things in such a charming fashion. Kat’s ex, Jeffrey, is a complete scumbag and the male escort played by Dermot Mulroney? Well, he’s just a do-right kind of guy, don’t you know.
I probably have the least amount of room to complain about predictability or genre clichés, given my love of bad horror and action films, but at least things vary from time to time. This one is just more worn out than old carpet.
I would say it’s a shame, but that’s only because I have lots of residual love for Debra Messing from Will & Grace, but I think Debra Messing’s made up her mind to just play Grace Adler for a really long time. The character of Kat is nothing more than a more depressed version of Grace… which I’ve seen variants of for seven seasons. On Will & Grace. This time, there’s no Megan Mullaly to liven up the set when Grace gets a little annoying.
By the end of this fairly predictable piece of “romance”, you mostly wish everyone would just shut up and stop whining. An easily resolved conflict does not make for two hours of a good movie and the tiresome aspects of everyone else in the movie make you long for one of the martinis that are constantly being served up and around the wedding party.
And really, ladies, does anyone find Dermot Mulroney attractive? I don’t. I’d rather tongue-kiss Hugh Grant any day of the week and we all know how I feel about Hugh Grant. It’s not that Mulroney’s bad looking, he’s just slightly above average, like an insurance salesman who’s aged well. I have a hard time buying him as a suave male escort.
Well, I have a hard time buying the whole movie; especially when I could’ve told you how it would end after the first ten minutes.
Pass me a martini, will you?
1416 and Counting 