The Wedding Date

Debra Messing is Kat. She is a British expatriate working in New York. Dermot Mulroney is Nick and he is what you would ordinarily call a male gigolo, but in this movie he is called, euphemistically, an escort. A wedding takes place in a week and Kat hires Nick to escort her to the wedding to the tune of $6,000 (excluding the charge for extra services, wink…wink…) which she withdraws from her 401k fund. Why she, a pretty lady, would be so desperate to get a hooker to escort her to her sister’s wedding is explained in a jiffy: Her former fiancé is the best man and she apparently, after being unceremoniously dumped by his ham of an ex-boyfriend, still feels romantic about him and by hiring a world-class escort, she expects to see him drool in fierce envy, but... Alright! Enough already! The story has been made into a variety of movies before and the viewer is very much aware of this fact before going into the cinema. So, with that out, the only challenge for the filmmakers is to be able to generate a plausible scenario that will somehow make this at least worthy of the ticket admission. The movie tends to be repetitious at times but it fortunately succeeds in building the romance between the unlikely pair of Kat and Nick. The canned characters that populate this formula are surprisingly amusing and even refreshing too, especially the cousin who has the best written lines outside of the main stars. There is a very romantic notion about finding love in the most unlikely person – that no matter how much you try to ignore it, love and all its rosy promises will still win in the end. Messing is gradually making the transition into the big screen and she brings such joy into it. Her Kat is an off the wall character whose wildly inconsistent ways prove such a charmer that eventually captures the heart of Nick. Mulroney provides great romantic support with his portrayal of an escort who, in his quiet demeanor, shows why he is much sought after by the ladies. What makes me like the movie more is its wonderful use of Michael Buble’s music. Home, Buble’s latest release happens to be my current favorite and when I heard it played, I instantly had a change of heart about the movie and started liking it. Sometimes, a clever director, when he knows he has a not so good a movie plot to sell, only needs to devise some other ways by which to distract the viewer and in this case I was pleasantly distracted into liking the movie. Enough said.