Daughter of the Bride

We follow Diane and Kate, a mother and daughter who are inseparable friends. Their lives are turned upside down. Diane and Kate are not only mother and daughter but also best friends. Their lives are turned upside down, however, when Diane announces her engagement to a man named Bruce, whom she's been secretly dating.

I end up identifying a lot with these female films, whether in terms of quality or flaws, extremes and considerations... I can understand, feel empathy, intropathy towards both protagonists due to their traumas and upbringings, even though I have never experienced any Of the two, I find it easy to put myself in their shoes, as well as having an aversion to slutty males, which doesn't happen here, just straight, cute top... Cute...

To be fair, my wife and I watched this solely because we by chance saw the trailer and noticed it was filmed in her hometown. We weren't expecting much and sure enough it was a very forgettable rom com. It was like a Hallmark movie with with a slightly bigger budget and far more notable cast. The movie perhaps elicited one genuine chuckle or two, but was otherwise rather unbelievable and often cringey. The cast looked like they were enjoying themselves, so good for them I suppose. When you're an Oscar winner like Marcia Gay Harden, I feel that gives you the right to do whatever the hell you want.

Finally, the "Sad Bar" is far more vibrant and well lit in real life as opposed to its depressing depiction in the film, lol.

This is bad... really bad. We lasted a little over an hour, although to be honest, we did start questioning whether to turn it off after about 10 minutes. Just atrocious viewing. We thought with a couple of decent actors in it, it may have passed muster to keep us slightly entertained for a couple of hours... but we were oh so wrong. I suppose if you were a 12 year old living in a two dimensional Barbie world of vapid nonsense and you cry yourself to sleep every night in the hope that your broken family would miraculously fix itself, you might find this a little entertaining, but it's pretty unlikely. Save yourself. Watch something else... anything else.

It feels like this movie was made by the laziest people in the world. Awful writing, lazy and unimaginative. Definitely seen Hallmark movies with more intelligence and zest. If the producers/writers had set out to kill the career of Halston Sage with this obnoxious, neurotic, poorly written character, they were doing a really good job of it for my taste. I hope it was only the cringey, badly written character, but I fear it was not. I didn't warm to her even in the most opportune comedic moments. The only redeeming feature for her in this movie was her opposite, Andrew Richardson who gives an utterly charming, subtle and warm performance. Perfectly tuned for a RomCom. She's lucky he turned up. Harden and Quinn manage their participation as well as you'd expect these two seasoned veterans to do. While Quinn came out strongest (and most grounded) Harden occasionally gives off a slight disconnect here and there. They got lucky with their fairly straightforward arcs and played them with light touches while ignoring the gaps and leaps in the writing. It feels like it was written in a hurry and no-one bothered with a second draft.

It's hard to believe this movie actually got made. There's not an original scene in the entire film, the lead is terrible and the film is shamelessly derivative of other films. Sadly this is the type of movie that needed AI to turn into something watchable. Clearly the producers thought it was enough to have Marcia Gay Harden and Aiden Quinn to prop up this embarrassing excuse for a romantic comedy, but good actors cannot save a script with more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese, along with an awful lead actress, and unimaginative directing. I cannot believe I wasted $3.99 on this. By the way, Hallmark made a movie with the same plot years ago and it's hard to believe the writer so shamelessly copied it, made it worse, and then got it made.