A mild, inoffensive romantic comedy (a bit light on both the romance and the comedy, but hey – I’ll take what I can get), Michael Ian Black’s Wedding Daze, retitled (awfully) The Pleasure of Your Company in the US, went straight to DVD in the states but secures theatrical distribution in the Czech Republic while Oscar favorites like Juno are gathering dust.
Jason Biggs stars as Anderson, who languishes for a year after proposing to his girlfriend and watching her drop dead from the shock.
Friend Ted urges him to ‘get back in the game’, and Anderson, taking the advice a bit too strongly, proposes to the next (reasonable looking) woman he sees, waitress Katie (Isla Fisher).
Little does he realize that Katie, going through her own crises, will actually say yes. Unconventional, perhaps, but the two decide to make a go of it: why can’t you just glance across a crowded diner and find the love of your life?
It’s a cute little premise, competently executed, and the film is filled with colorful side performances, including fathers played by Joe Pantoliano and Edward Herrmann.
But it’s also very conventional, and just a bit too by-the-numbers; something I wouldn’t have expected from director Black, one of the creators of MTV’s wonderfully irreverent The State.
Another major flaw: the film too often sacrifices its colorful characters for a cheap gag or two, which usually don’t work anyway.
Despite the low rating, you could do (much) worse.
