Sam Claflin and Olivia Munn in Netflix's Love Wedding Repeat.Riccardo Ghilardi/Netflix
- Love Wedding Repeat
- Directed by Dean Craig
- Written by Dean Craig, based on the film Plan de table written by Francis Nief and Christelle Raynal
- Starring Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn and Freida Pinto
- Classification N/A; 100 minutes
For all those pining for the wedding season that 2020 will not be providing, the new and annoyingly titled rom-com Love Wedding Repeat is here to remind you that nuptials are not all they’re cracked up to be. And not in an intentional sort of way.
Director Dean Craig’s remake of the little-seen 2011 French comedy Plan de table is like the Groundhog Day of wedding movies. Or maybe it’s the Edge of Tomorrow (a.k.a. Live. Die. Repeat). Or a dozen other time-loop movies in which the same event is revisited over and over again until our protagonist rights some universal wrong. Except this concept typically involves our main character, or some audience surrogate, figuring out the repetition scheme. Or there is at least some meta-contextual justification offered by the filmmakers for why we’re watching such over-and-over-again shenanigans.
Claflin, right, is miscast as a nebbishy, bumbling Hugh Grant type.Riccardo Ghilardi/Netflix
That’s not the case here – it’s more like the filmmakers got about 45 per cent into their story, realized it wasn’t very interesting, added a whimsical voice-over from some unseen “Oracle” who controls fate, and decided to instead try different approaches until something sticks. It never does.
Blame the script, which tries to be high farce but delivers few original gags. Blame the casting, especially the positioning of too-handsome-for-this-Earth Sam Claflin as some sort of nebbishy, bumbling Hugh Grant type. Blame the musical choices, with Craig leaning extra-hard on Debussy for his emotional beats. Or blame yourself, for hovering over the film’s title in your Netflix queue, seeing the extra-attractive cast, and saying “I do” to what looks like a frothy, harmless piece of matrimonial entertainment.
But, just like the film’s half-hearted conceit, take comfort in knowing that you’ll be able to divorce yourself from the proceedings with the click of a button.
Love Wedding Repeat is available to stream on Netflix starting April 10
Plan your screen time with the weekly What to Watch newsletter, with film, TV and streaming reviews and more. Sign up today.