THE WILDE WEDDING: Too Many Characters Spoil The Plot
Let’s talk about Patrick Stewart for a minute.
His career has lasted more than half a century, he has 147 entries on his IMDB page, as well as numerous stage appearances to his name. You can (roughly) split the progression of his career into three phases:
The Shakespeare Phase, 1966-1982: Sixteen years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, performances in TV movies like Anthony and Cleopatra and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
The Star Trek Phase(r!) 1987-2004: Seven years playing Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then playing him again in the four Star Trek movies.
The Superhero Phase, 2000-present: Starring as Professor Charles Xavier in Logan.
Demarcating Stewart‘s career is not an exact science; the phases overlap, and there are plenty of wildcard films and TV shows thrown in the mix. But in recent years, a definite fourth phase has begun to emerge: comedy. An unlikely alliance with Seth MacFarlane has seen the knighted actor take roles in Ted, Family Guy and American Dad!, as well as the lead in the ill-fated TV show Blunt Talk. Stewart has lent his inimitable voice to family-friendly comedies too, like Gnomeo & Juliet, and Ice Age: Continental Drift.
The latest film of this comedic phase is The Wilde Wedding, which sees the follicly-challenged legend sporting a rather interesting hairpiece…
The Wilde Wedding
Retired actress Eve Wilde (Glenn Close) is getting married for the fourth time, to ‘serious novelist’ Harold Alcott (Patrick Stewart). Her first husband and father of her three grown sons, fellow actor Laurence Darling (John Malkovich) will be in attendance, joining his sons, Harold’s daughters, and a whole host of nieces, nephews, friends and strangers.
As the families mingle, old feuds are rekindled, new romances bloom, and none of the guests are on their best behaviour. Amidst all this chaos, Eve starts to wonder if she really wants to go through with the marriage, and if she does, if she has chosen the right husband.
Who Are All These People?
There is one big mistake in The Wilde Wedding, and that is the excessively large ensemble cast. When your ensemble numbers well into the double digits, it’s near-impossible to give them all satisfying arcs, or even characteristics. By the time the movie had ended, I still didn’t know who half these people were. Because of this, every time a new flirtation or relationship starts up, it takes a while to figure out if it’s incestuous. Yes, the Wildes are a peculiar family indeed.
Having such a vast cast has an irrevocably damaging impact on the movie as a whole. Chiefly perhaps, is the waste of an awful lot of talent. Yael Stone, who minus the red lipstick and American accent is nearly unrecognisable from her role on Orange Is The New Black, is stuck in a frustratingly anaemic relationship with Jack Davenport. The ever-reliable, sometimes scene-stealing Noah Emmerich gets an even smaller part, as one of the Darling sons who falls in love really quickly. That’s his whole character. What a waste!
And that’s without even getting to the criminal underuse of Patrick Stewart, who makes so little impact here, he might as well be replaced by his hairpiece on a stick. The man has a gift for comedy, but the script serves him as poorly as it does the less experienced actors; he gets no good lines, and even (this really pains me to write), becomes a little irritating by the end. I said it just now, and I’ll say it again – what a waste!
Eating up screen-time that would have been far better in the hands of these actors are a whole bunch of subplots that are at best unfunny, and at worst, plain stupid. Peter Facinelli plays a Darling son who is perpetually horny. Hilarious! Minnie Driver plays a rock star who can’t stop smoking. Interesting! Grace Van Patten plays a girl who falls in love with her first cousin (Tim Boardman). Not at all weird! The Wilde Wedding is clearly aiming for comedy, but it misses almost every time (I’ll admit, there is one good joke about Mikhail Gorbachev.)
None of these multitudinous storylines are given enough room to flourish, not even the central romance, which I’ll get to in a minute. Instead of focusing on two or three storylines, and leaving them room to play out in a satisfying manner, The Wilde Wedding features so many that some don’t even warrant an ending.
The film showcases a hideous attempt at plotting, but it does make you appreciate, I suppose, that ensemble films are not as easy to make as they look. If you get one thing out of The Wilde Wedding, it will be greater respect for recent wedding ensemble comedies that were done right (or at least better), like Bridesmaids, and Mamma Mia.
Oh What Could Have Been!
What makes the general failure of The Wilde Wedding particularly disappointing are the occasional glimpses we get of the better film this could have been, had writer/director Damian Harris not decided to suffocate it with so many characters.
John Malkovich and Glenn Close‘s most famous collaboration was 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons, where they play eighteenth century scheming ex-lovers. Their performances, and the film itself, were praised by critics and audiences alike, and nearly thirty years later, their chemistry is as strong as ever. By far the best parts of The Wilde Wedding are the scenes shared by Malkovich and Close. The two are magnetic together, but more than that, they seem to have a genuine, comfortable connection.
Malkovich is not an actor you’d particularly think of as a romantic lead, yet his affinity with Close yields a surprisingly tender performance. These earnest scenes jar a little, compared to all that facile comedy, and when they arrive it’s like watching a different movie, one that is much warmer and more entertaining.
And the thing is, these scenes, the ones that work the best, are so simple. They are the only ones where the people seem like people, rather than lame walking jokes. When Laurence is checking delicately with Eve whether she really thinks she should go through with the wedding, or when the two of them are just messing around, singing to ‘What Is This Thing Called Love?’, you can feel the weight of their shared history. They are truly lovely moments.
But then before we’ve had time to fully appreciate them, the film has stumbled on, and we’re watching Minnie Driver ‘comically’ smoke a cigarette, or Peter Facinelli have sex with some anonymous woman. These transitions from brilliance to feculence are an exasperating reminder of what this movie could have been, and the rubbish that it actually is.
In Conclusion
To put it succinctly, The Wilde Wedding is not very good. There are too many characters, which leaves no room for character development, or any meaningful arcs. Though the film is full of jokes, both verbal and visual, almost none of them land. The wedding comedy is a packed sub-genre, and The Wilde Wedding doesn’t do anything new, or better, than all the many films that have come before it.
What makes its failure so frustrating is its utter waste of Malkovich, Close, and their wonderful chemistry. That these excellent, established actors are crowded out by a host of barely-sketched characters, unfunny jokes, and go-nowhere storylines, is this film’s ultimate undoing.
What’s your favourite wedding comedy?
The Wilde Wedding is released in the US on September 15th. For all other release dates, click here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E8qtN7AmxEp://
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