'Love Wedding Repeat' A Review

Love Wedding Repeat is a romantic-cringe-comedy that is mostly cringe. The movie opens on space and a baffling voice over then transitions to an awkward date between Jack(Sam Claflin) and Dina(Olivia Munn) in Rome which is cut short by a chance encounter with Jack's old college roommate. Three years later Jack's sister Hayley(Eleanor Tomlinson) is getting married and Dina is in attendance but so is Jack's ex-girlfriend, Hayley's ex-boyfriend and a slue of other unlikable mostly unfunny characters.

Claflin and Munn have chemistry and give charming performances within the heavily contrived, derivative, and mostly uninspired conceit in which they find themselves. Claflin tries a bit too hard to channel 90's era Hugh Grant but mostly succeeds and Munn is surprisingly wonderful it simply makes you wish she'd been given a better part or a better movie to put it in. Tomlinson is likable enough, the various talented supporting cast are unfortunately at the mercy of their mostly dour and despicable characters, all in all the cast almost categorically goes to waste.

The rom-com as a genre is mostly formulaic, and that's fine, even comforting but the tropes in Love Wedding Repeat are so tired and the characters almost all cringe/no comedy that it has little to redeem it. The most egregious flaw of the movie though is it's absolutely squandered use of the Groundhogs Day device which it's title is a reference to a recent wonderful film with the some device Edge Of Tomorrow subtitled Live Die Repeat. Instead of having one of the characters relieve the wedding the entire first act is once way in which it plays out, the 30 second second act where other permutations play out in confusing montage, and the third act being another way it plays out with some resolution. It's confused, ineffective, and a truly bewildering use of this typically knock out device.

Perhaps a comfort watch for some but startlingly lacking in quality. Currently streaming on Netflix.

Don't See It.