Plan an ending! (The Wedding Planner (DVD))

Member Name: Welshlad

Product:	The Wedding Planner (DVD)
Date:	09/07/01 (65 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Decent movie, Great landscapes, Good transfer

Disadvantages: Average Acting, Average script, Awful extras

The Wedding Planner
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Year: 2001
Run Time: 104mins
Director: Adam ShankMan

Starring the undeniably gorgeous Jennifer Lopez as one Mary Fiore as the Wedding Planner, this is a film described (by MTV Radio) as "The best date Movie of the year", which is some acclaim for a film!
Self-described as 'A romantic Comedy about love, destiny and other events you just cannot plan for', the wedding planner seems devoid of inspiration and ideas just by looking at the background of the film and the slogans it chooses to associate itself with.

As the Wedding Planner, Mary is a true perfectionist, and damn good at her job to boot. If you wanted a picture perfect wedding almost guaranteed to be hiccup free and idillic, Mary is the lady to see, as this is how she makes a living. Things are going from good to great for Mary, her life is as she wants it, her career is going through the roof - to the point that she is about to be made a partner in the large wedding planning corporation for whom she works. The only thing missing in her life is a man, and not having been on a date for 2 years, this is the only aspect of her life you could called incomplete. The reason for this lack of activity in the love department is due to a cheating ex-high school lover and her best friend, which took her by surprise and led to a lack of trust in men.

However, when Mary literally falls for a handsome doctor named Steve (Matthew McConaughey) who saves her life (in a rather pathetic scene where she is about to be killed by a dustbin! I say COME ON, this is a rather pathetic addition to the almost bearable storyline up to this point!) and takes her to his practising children's hospital for rehabilitation. This sparks a love interest between the two.
Unknown to her, a bride for whom she is working for played by the equally stunning Bridgette Wilson Sampras (a very large world renowned client (of which the succe
ss of this marriage forms the basis of her partnership granting)) is engaged to the very same doctor, which means she is instantly breaking the first rule of her profession - never become emotionally involved, and certainly never start an affair with an engaged client!

At this point, Mary faces one of her toughest decisions of her life - does she opt to see the wedding through and try to disregard her feelings, or does she say what the hell and follow her heart? In typical Hollywood fashion, anyone can guess which option she takes, and this is one of my main criticisms of the film - its just too correct and idyllic, and the film could have been made a little more interesting had the directors and production team took a slightly more adventurous route through the film rather than taking the easy way out.

While the Wedding planner was enjoyable and a very charming film indeed, there are a few things I didn't like about it. At certain times in the film Jennifer Lopez seemed to struggle a touch - with me not being the biggest J.Lo acting fan, this maybe slight bias, but on the whole she did OK. Add to that, the frequently laughable script, which is very uninspired and run-of-the-mill to say the least, and you can see why this film had limited success at the box office.

The film looks luscious most of the time, with some stunning scenes, vibrant colours and great backdrops making this a visual treat. Lasting for 104 minutes, the film progresses quite well, if losing itself lightly in the middle third with the somewhat unlikely 'father's arranged marriage' input. That said, the film ended in a very predictable and politically correct manner, just as most viewers would have hoped.

Out now on Region 1 DVD, we are given a great transfer that looks nothing short of sensational. he film is presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, Anamorphically enhanced, a transfer of visual quality that shocked me (certainly the 2.35:1 did, that&
#39;s for sure). The colours are reproduced perfectly, and for the most the picture is perfect. However, some slight signs of pixilation and isolation are evident, although this was viewed on quite a large screen and may not be noticeable on a smaller viewing.
Audio in Dolby Digital 5.1 is limited mainly to the dialogue on the centre speaker and the front L&R that provide the effects. Rears are almost stranded and unused, only for the odd near-silent effect or to echo the lovely musical score being reproduced by the front sound stage.

Extras on the DVD are as follows:

* Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
* Deleted Scenes (about 8 of them, all with directors commentary)
* Directors Commentary (only listened to some of this, and from what I could tell this was very uninteresting and full of 'sate the obvious' comments that provide little extra info and are of little use to the listener! Not the best commentary from what I heard!)
* Making of featurette (more of a glorified trailer, lasing little over three minutes, this is a very poor excuse for an extra feature and offers very little)
* The Dancer and the Cowboy Feature (again, lasting a pathetic 3-4 minutes, this has a short interview with Lopez an McConaughey, and very little else!)
* Weblink (another pointless extra, added only to make the DVD case seem more impressive!)
* Theatrical Trailer (simply spoil the film if watched before!)
* Filmoraphies (always handy to have - about the only extra worth its place on the disk)
* and some more minor extras

If you ever needed an example for attempted quantity over quality of extras, this is it, and the extras features on this DVD were highly disappointing. Why half of them are on there I can only be down to filling space, as they offer nothing at all to the viewer.


Overall
*******

To sum up, this is quite a good film, certainly no classic, but not a movie I wish I hadn'
t bothered with. If I said I didn't like this film at all, I would be lying, and despite my wishes for a bolder approach to the storyline, I still felt a sense of satisfaction after the movie - making me think the producer and director got what they wanted out of me!
That said, A script so poor at times it could have been written by junior school children and un-necessary sub-plots threatening to bog the film down (not to mention occasionally laughable acting) and there are just too many minuses for this film to be granted a favourite.
The same goes for the DVD. An attractive transfer on the whole, backed up with a competent audio track only let down by obscene extras that may as well not be there.

Fairly run of the mill stuff, this is not a film I can see anyone watching more than the once, and certainly a film for the fairer sex, if you've got the cash, it may be worth a purchase (or maybe wait and rent the UK version), but its no essential that's for sure!

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