I have a soft spot for romantic comedies, you know, the ones that dominate Romedy Now. I know they all have the exact same story and sell the exact same cliches. But they make for great stress viewing. Pretty people, in pretty clothes, talking about love and hope, and also finding the same in a way one can never achieve in real life, these breezy films can act as a temporary balm for a soul bruised by reality. With a pandemic at our doorsteps, could there be a better time for such indulgence? So I thought, until Love Wedding Repeat happened. (Google tells me that the film is an adaptation of the ‘French flop’ Plan De Table. I guess once wasn’t enough.)
As the title aptly suggests, there is a wedding. There are people trying to stop it. There is a secret and, of course, there’s a lot of confusion. If you know Tamil cinema, it might remind you of a certain Sundar C film (Unakkaga Ellam Unakkaga, I am looking at you). The film would have been far more palatable had it, at least, been funny. Instead, we get ‘jokes’ that are as limp as Frieda Pinto’s hair in the film. Seriously, are we still expected to find jokes about the size of a man’s penis funny? There is a running gag about a sedative in Love Wedding Repeat. But in fact, it was the film that turned out to be a sedative for the insomniac me. Silver linings, I guess.
Granted, nobody watches these films for an epiphany. We merely want it to entertain us, make us forget the dark times we live in, with its sugary blitheness. The story might be cliche, but it is the characters that we root for. But with Love Wedding Repeat, you get cardboard cutouts. One can sense that the actors are half-confused themselves; not convinced about what they are doing.
To make things worse, the background score goes into overdrive, whenever there is a semblance of a moment. Yes, we get it. Now give it a rest, will ya? Towards the latter half, when the film ‘repeats’ itself, it suddenly tries to be insightful. Until now, the characters were just bumbling around, trying to be funny. Suddenly, because of a good hand of ‘chance’, they all find little pellets of profound wisdom that they wholeheartedly share with others, changing their lives forever. Unfortunately, the unforeseen ‘enlightenment’ only makes it harder to like this film. It was okay to be boring, but pretentious as well? Come on.
Here’s an example. One of the characters says to his sister, “We are afraid to let a real relationship happen because we know how easy it is to lose the ones we love.” Except, one of the relationships is a three-days old ‘special connection’ which never gets told. And the other is a six-month relationship, where she has already cheated on her other half once. And they had to ruin my favourite line from Fleabag for this.
In these times of quarantine and lockdown, everything is getting cancelled, including weddings. Love Wedding Repeat is one wedding I wish had gotten cancelled, and one I definitely wouldn’t suggest a repeat of.
Starring: Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn, Freida Pinto, Eleanor Tomlinson
Created by: Dean Craig
Streaming on: netflix