| Product: |
Confetti (DVD) |
| Date: |
14/06/06 (173 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: i actually cannot think of any at all!
Disadvantages: Everything, I just did not find it funny at all.
Ah the good old British comedy strikes again, ploughing the same furrow as pretty much every other one that had come since the mega success of Four Weddings and a Funeral (Sean of the Dead apart). For some reason British comedy desperately trying to duplicate
Richard Curtis’ successful formula and, by and large, failing miserably to raise even half as many laughs.
Confetti is a glossy magazine aimed at celebrating, informing and helping people plan their marriages. Antoni Clark (Jimmy Carr), the owner publisher, has come up with the idea of running a competition in the magazine and wants to find three couples who have an idea for the wedding ceremony that is just a little bit different from the everyday marriage. The three couples will be helped to arrange the own ceremony and will get married in front of a panel of judges who will determine the winner. The winner then gets a brand new house to start their life in courtesy of Confetti.
With his editor Vivienne (Felicity Montagu) they conduct a series of interviews to cut down the applicants to the three they want…
Matt and Sam (Martin Freeman (The office) & Jessica Stevenson (Spaced)) who want a Busby Berkely 30’s musical style wedding, Josef and Isabelle (Steven Mangan (Green Wing) & Isabelle MacNeil (Man Stroke Woman)who are tennis fanatics and propose a tennis themed wedding and Michael and Joanna (Robert Webb (Peep Show) & Olivia Colman (Peep Show)) who are naturists and want a natural naked wedding.
Confetti, the movie, follows the couples, the stereotypical gay wedding planners, the families and the magazine as they build up to the big day. It is shot to make it look a bit like a fly on the wall documentary, as we fly around from place to place watching the preparations begin to form and the competition between the couples heat up.
For me the big problem with Confetti is that, like the last British comedy I saw Alien Autopsy, it just isn’t funny. The script isn’t funny (although as the whole thing is said to have been improvised as they went, without lines, then maybe I should say the dialogue isn’t funny.) and the story, while sounding amusing, just never really gets to grips with its potential. In fact thinking about it now not one single bit of it was funny. I think there was one bit in it that brought a smile to my face and that was also the only time I heard anyone else laughing as well!
I couldn’t relate to any of the couples at all, none of them were really that likeable as far as I was concerned. Josef and Isabelle were the ones who had the best potential to bring laughter to the audience but none of their scenes really hit the right mark comedy wise.
Like I said I had heard this was all done freeform without any pre written dialogue. I can believe this as nothing really flows smoothly at all. It reminds me of a less funny Green Wing (channel 4 comedy series). A bunch of characters held together by an overall plot but left to have bizarre set piece like encounters in between, almost like little sketches of their own.
Some characters seem to exist for little or no reason, almost as if someone had a good idea for a little sketch and created a character for it, and then thought they better use them in a few more scenes to either make up the numbers or just because they then thought ‘oh we’d better use Joe bloggs again hadn’t we, after all we told everyone he was their best friend/whatever’
Josef and Isabelle are the only ones worth watching just because of his festering jealousy and anger. All the scenes that almost reach funny involve him… a fight on the tennis court, Isabelle getting a nose job and his reactions around the wedding planners and the other two contestants.
The big problem Confetti has in my opinion is that it is too nice, too middle of the road and too much like a documentary for its own good. There is no sharp dialogue to make you laugh, no outstanding performance and no interesting direction to catch your eye, in fact it is downright plodding by the numbers direction!
There is nothing in it I can see to make even remotely recommend it… well unless the choice is Confetti or Da Vinci Code!!!
The actors involved certainly have the ability, they have shown it before in other things, but they are just not pushed to use it. The director maybe needed to be firmer and controlled them a bit more. If the story was being made up as they went along someone in editing or who looked at the daily rushes (bits filmed that day) should have seen it wasn’t really working and possibly decided that adding in some scripted funny lines might be a good idea.
All in all Confetti will go down as another in a line of British comedies aimed at a slightly too British audience than most of the target audience are these days, along with Mrs. Henderson Presents and Keeping Mum because I wonder whether a younger, more americanised, audience will find it funny at all and may even be baffled at it supposedly being a comedy!
Summary: A just totally unfunny 'comedy' in my opinion.
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