The Wedding Date: Critic Reviews

So many body parts from other engineered romantic comedies have been crudely harvested and stitched together in the making of this weird robotic lark that Maid of Honor of Frankenstein might be more useful a nickname.

Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney star in a romantic comedy that struggles to capture the charm and ebullience of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

The movie goes wrong from the start by simply throwing us into the action and asking us to identify with Messing's desperate scheme.

Don't bother asking how an Ivy League guy would end up hooking. Such a query could only lead to some dark answers, answers that the filmmakers have no interest in dealing with but which would make for a much more interesting movie.

All surface and no soul. Come to think of it, the surface isn't so darned hot either.

Messing should know this is precisely the kind of movie Grace would ridicule Will for dragging her to see.

Clare Kilner's cast frolics in the countryside in an appropriately British-romantic-comedy fashion, and at times the characters trade silly snaps, but Dana Fox's screenplay is structurally shaky.

Not a single scene connects smoothly with the next, characters make head-scratching choices that come out of nowhere and logic consistently proves itself an enemy to be avoided at all costs.

Even the most ardent evacuees from Super Bowl madness will recognize the familiar road map that the screenplay diligently follows.

Why Kat must be so emotionally clueless or her sister so selfish is a mystery that invites an essay about what women think of each other these days.

The Wedding Date presents the curious case of two appealing performances surviving a bombardment of schlock.

A tossed bouquet full of dead flowers and bad jokes that belongs in the nearest trash receptacle.

Mulroney, best known as the title character in Roberts' comedy My Best Friend's Wedding, is by far the best thing about this gaggingly unromantic comedy. His character's bio, divulged in a thumbnail, is the least convincing thing.

Scenes don't build momentum, and I don't think I've ever seen a feature where so many lines of dialogue were delivered by actors hovering off-screen or standing with their backs to the camera.

This is a movie that wants to break out and be tepid. It would like to dare to be tepid. But it just can't find the energy.

As far as Big Day experiences go, a drunken speech from a distant relative would be far more entertaining -- and funnier -- than The Wedding Date.

From the look of it, poor Debra Messing's first starring vehicle was an unmitigated disaster even before the cameras started rolling.

An epic comic miscalculation.

There is not a single memorable joke or line of dialogue in it, something that even the dumbest of comedies usually delivers.

Admittedly, no part of the year is immune to bad romantic comedies. But what distinguishes The Wedding Date, what qualifies it so impeccably for turkey season, goes way beyond generic foulness.

Mulroney is a stealth actor: Whenever you see him in a picture, you're not just reminded of how good he almost always is -- you have the sense of discovering it for the first time.

This is a charmless, lifeless affair that had me leaving the theater in a mood more appropriate to a funeral than a wedding.

The film has an energetic grace, directed with fluid efficiency by Clare Kilner.