Monday, April 08, 2019

Movie review - "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994) *****

Just finished rewatching "Four Weddings and a Funeral"... has it been 25 years? Gulp!
Some random thoughts
- ADR terrible
- It's great the Carrie (Andie McDowell) is sexually liberated and everything but to have sex with a guy you know really likes you while you're engaged to someone else, and then to turn up on that guy's wedding day... it's a little self centered and I'm not sure how long she and Charles would last... but I know in my heart that Charles and his friends (the real romance of the film) will still be ultra tight
- it's fun to rewatch knowing Hugh Grant was closer IRL to his character in Bridget Jones' Diary and I would totally watch a remake of this film with that character in the lead
- the set up, structure, and pay off of this screenplay is an utter, utter marvel, as is the fact it balances so many characters and subplots and tones and if you think that's easy try writing it yourself - even Richard Curtis himself never topped this
- I don't think there's any movie where so many actors/characters got a moment in the sun... everyone remembers Charles, and Carrie, and Tom and Fiona, Gareth and Matthew, Scarlett, and David the deaf brother... but also the married couples, Bernard and Lydia, and anxious Angus and drunk Laura, and Henrietta and her dumb brother, and the lecherous guy who tries to pick up Carrie, the girl who romances David, the old man who snaps at Charles, the old man who scowls at Father Gerald, and Father Gerald, and the woman who asks Fiona if she's a lesbian and all the ex girlfriends... they all get at least one moment to really shine and I can't think of any other which matches it...
- "is it raining I hadn't noticed" retains the power to horrify

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