Okay, this movie failed on several levels: originality, structure, acting, casting, photography. Those were the aspects that caught my eye. The first third was just plain boring and stupid. But as the movie progressed, it became increasingly over-the-top idiotic and I actually enjoyed it.
I recently watched "Love, Rosie" with Lily Collins and Sam Claflin, which really wasn't much better but it had nice production design and the two main characters had good chemistry, and overall everyone just looked pretty. That movie knew that it had nothing new to say, but it was at least attractive. "The Wedding Pact" failed at this completely (with the exception of Haylie Duff). Why did they cast a man in his forties to portray a college student and then the same character in his early thirties? Why did they give him the world's worse wig to make him look like a freshman? What was with the aging bed'n'breakfast hostess giving subtle signs of nymphomania? And certain scenes were framed and edited poorly, drawing attention to this or that detail that actually had nothing to do with the scene. I wouldn't label this movie as "ugly," but at times it looked painfully fatuous.
Then we had the scenes that popped out of nowhere, and/or went on too long. The scene where Mitch and Elizabeth talk about a hot dog buffet they attended in college, and Mitch actually spells out that three hot dogs are fewer than twenty-seven hot dogs. The scene where the girl in the tube top pops into Mitch's car and her boyfriend follows her, and Mitch acts like a relationship counselor (is that his job? what is his job??). The towel whipping duel. The "Heaven's Angels" cult. The mix-up with Elizabeth's address so that Mitch almost gets on a plane to Hawaii. The Coppola-esque scene between Jake and his rich, domineering father. Where were these scenes supposed to go? Some of them seemed like they just existed for the sake of one punchline, or one jump-scare, or just forced exposition to tell the audience how we are supposed to feel about a certain character.
I have seen worse acting, but there was not one performance here I would call "good." The story was about these two star-crossed lovers who are made for each other but keep missing each other, surprise, shock, surprise, shock. It touched all the time-worn bases: the moment of attraction, the realization that it's love, the painful inability to express that love, the determination to come together, the rekindling, the conflict, the breakup, the reconciliation. I know you know this already, I just cannot believe they still make movies that actually go through all of these ancient steps with so little variation. Even Jane Austen would ask people to switch it up a bit.
But I give this movie 5/10, because in the last third, I laughed out loud several times. After a certain point the script stopped trying to make sense, and events just happened whether they had any reason to or not. I will admit this movie also had a few legitimately funny moments. Kelly Perine was probably the best casting decision, although his character often had nothing to work with. And, I will say it again, Haylie Duff looked attractive. I could see some careful attention to her makeup and wardrobe; I wish they had given the same amount of attention to the photography, or the acting (or any sense of logic in the story itself, but we all know that's not going to happen).
I do look for more in a movie. But in a world where big-budget bad movies pander to an audience they can count on (i.e. "Disaster Movie," "The Emoji Movie"), this low-budget bad movie was inane in an amusing way.
