Wedding Belles (2007) (TV)

Director:

Philip John

Writers:

Dean Cavanagh (written by)
Irvine Welsh (written by)

Release Date:

29 March 2007 (UK)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

A darkly humorous look at the lives and loves of four modern women, each with their own remarkable, intriguing and often tragic stories.

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Michelle Gomez	...	Amanda
Shirley Henderson	...	Kelly
Shauna Macdonald	...	Rhona
Kathleen McDermott	...	Shaz
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Juliet Cadzow	...	Kelly's Ma
Scott Cleverdon	...	Kevin
Brendan Coyle	...	Priest
Michael Fassbender	...	Barney
Niall Greig Fulton	...	Muffy
Sean Harris	...	Adrian Collins
Miles Jupp	...	Male Host
Jonathan Lewis Owen	...	Joshua
Graeme Rooney	...	Nurse Anderson
Jamie Sives	...	Gordon
Irvine Welsh

Runtime:

95 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

UK:18

Filming Locations:

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Company:

Junction Films

Quotes:

Kelly: I never got the chance to do it to you when you was alive, so this'll have to do.

Lacks substance and instead fills the time with cursing and misfiring crude attempts at adult humour

It is a week to go till Amanda's wedding and the plans are going well. The lives of her friends are not looking as rosy as hers though. Rhona has turned to drugs and longs for suicide to be reunited with her dead fiancé. Shaz is having an affair with a priest and Kelly has cancer on top of still suffering with scars from her childhood. The four friends revolve around each other as the week that should be progressing towards happiness and love, becomes one of revenge and violence.

Let's just get this over with. There is no real need to read on, my summary line has already told you I didn't like the film and in case you missed it, I did think the film was a terribly pointless mess. There. Now, given the gushing praise for this film on this site and the fact that any even semi-negative review is voted "not useful", I imagine you the reader will have already have voted me useless (or in your parlance - "wrong") because I disagree with your views on this title. A shame that you will never ask me why I think this or just tell me you disagree but here we are. Anyway, by now the few readers this review will get either agree with me or are actually interested in the opinions of others, whether they differ or not. So my next problem is where to start with this.

Opening with four women in wedding dresses firing bullets into the men who have hurt them somehow, you could be forgiven from thinking that, when we jump to a week before, that the narrative would lead us to this point and explain the whys to us. In one way the film does move towards this point but only because the flow of time is linear. In terms of development of the story though, most of the film is really spent going nowhere. Mostly we hang around with the characters in various situations and it is only in the final third that suddenly motivations for the various acts of revenge are revealed – and they almost all come out of nowhere. To fill the time what we are left with are various "shocking" or comic moments that include a woman dressed as a nun masturbating an old man (who incidentally needed finishing off because the woman stopped him having sex with a dead woman in fishnets); a woman snorting the ashes of a dead dog; an incident with a man raped by a dog and of course endless swearing.

Now my main problem with this was that there was no story to support any of it and indeed even the ending chickens out of everything, suddenly going a bit sentimental and ending in a soft and unsatisfying fashion. Reading the reviews here, it does appear I'm missing the point by looking for a story or characters because according to those that love it, the film is actually a dark comedy. I have seen things that are outrageous and funny (Mel Brooks in his heyday comes to mind) but this is just outrageous. For some viewers this will be enough because they will call it "cult" and embrace it as edgy and darkly comic but from my point of view, the writers have just stuck lots of "gross-out" moments in there, written the C word lots and hoped that the "cult" appeal Welsh gained from Trainspotting will be enough to prevent anyone spotting the total lack of substance or genuine humour (dark or otherwise).

It is a terrible shame in some regards because there are real moments here and there in the characters – but they are few and far between. This wastes the actresses in stupid, foul-mouthed cardboard cut-out characters. Gomez is wasted. She has a good body and can swear like a trooper but there is nothing else for her to work with. Macdonald overacts in her simplistic addict role. Henderson has nothing to do but squeak around for so long that when she does eventually have a touching moment, it is devalued by everything that had gone before. McDermott is goodlooking and natural throughout – a waste that her material is just plain weak.

Overall then a mostly pointless and puerile affair that trades off shock value in place of substance – hoping that viewers will just call it "cult" and lap it up. You're not "wrong" if you loved it, it just means you fall within Welsh's target group. The good news is that that group is small.