They say nobody is perfect, but I'm starting to think Rachael Leigh Cook might be. She's had the bad luck of doing horrible things but she's also been blessed with parts in good movies; "My first wedding" stands in the middle. Directed by Laurent Firode and written by Joan Carr-Wiggin, this is your everyday romantic comedy but with an unusual theme in its story: a lust problem.
Vanessa (Leigh Cook) goes walking on the street and wants to have sex with every man she sees. This part is perfect for the young actress, whose looks are beyond sexy. Her gift for innocence also serves her very well here, as she confronts the 'holy' life of her character with the wild dreams she has every night.
So Vanessa is about to get married and she's trying to control her impulses because her fiancée Andre (Paul Hopkins) is very catholic and doesn't believe in sex before marriage. She enters a church to make a confession and Nick (Kenny Doughty), a carpenter working there, poses accidentally as a priest and listens to her problems. As he watches her walking away, he's stunned; so he offers more help with the troubles
Even when he's not a priest.
Longer into the film, when Nick says Vanessa is perfect it's impossible not to believe him. Rachael Leigh Cook is indeed perfect and she makes her character that way. However, the credit is not all Rachael's
The British Doughty is a gifted comedian and has the necessary charm for the role of Nick; a deceitful and winning ladies-man who has fallen in love.
Yes, we know how the story ends, but that's not a problem in almost every romantic comedy, because if you let yourself go (as I've said many times), things can work. One of this film's few problems is that it doesn't work even when you try to let go. The chemistry between the leads is believable, but maybe the situations they live take it too far.
This is not a problem when I watch any romantic comedy, but the little sense of reality and the distance the director seems to put from his characters are elements that don't end up helping the final result. Plus, some funny moments abuse of repetition and even when Doughty is funny, he can't do the same thing several times and still get a laugh.
"My first wedding" is a film you should see if you are a Rachael Leigh Cook fan. As I read somewhere, "she sizzles"; if you want to catch a romantic comedy where you can get carried away by what doesn't make sense and lies far from reality, get "13 going on 30" or "Love Actually".
