Last Wedding just wore me out. There's an obvious level of talent here, more than enough to produce a smart, funny and/or touching little film. I kept waiting for that movie to take shape, but it never does. Spending 100 minutes watching interesting ideas of characters that never coalesce, sitting through scenes that go out of their way to avoid most of the meaningful drama in the story, listening to dialog that almost always says either too much or too little, it's as though Last Wedding were made up of the deleted scenes that weren't good enough to make it into a mediocre indy flick about modern relationships.
Focusing on three Canadian couples and the disintegration of their relationships, writer/director Bruce Sweeney never offers a reason for any of it. Noah and Zipporah (Benjamin Ratner and Frida Betrani) are getting married after knowing each other for only 6 months, and there's not even the slightest hint of how these two fell in love or why they tying the knot so quickly. Noah's friends Peter and Shane (Tom Scholte and Vincent Gale) already have their own live-in girlfriends.
Peter's been with Leslie (Nancy Sivak) for so long he can't even remember but though there's no sign of anything wrong with their relationship, he cheats on her with a young college student. Here's the thing about that. Some guys do cheat for practically no reason. Those guys cheat all the time. The movie clearly shows that this is the first time Peter's done anything like this. When those guys cheat, there's always a reason. They're frustrated with their career or unhappy with their lover or regretful about their life and the cheating is a reaction to that emotional turmoil. There's no such explanation for Peter's libidinous behavior. This girl reads him a sexually charged poem and it's like he's mesmerized.
Then there's Shane, who's involved with a younger woman named Sarah (Molly Parker). Shane is an architect bitterly unhappy with his profession and his mood is not improved when Sarah graduates with her own degree in architecture and gets a job at a big firm. But again, aside from throwing out some names and jargon from an architectural textbook, there's no rationale for anything he feels or does.
Noah and Zipporah's attraction, Peter's cheating and Shane's anger are at the heart of everything in this movie, but since none of it makes sense, nothing in the film makes sense. All that you can have is little bits of dramatic and comedic shtick and what there is of that in Last Wedding is weirdly disjointed. The story is constantly building to moments of humor or angst, then running away from them as fast as it can. The one time the film sets up a big moment and then pays it off effectively is, unsurprisingly, the best scene in the entire movie by a country mile. If writer/director Sweeney had consistently done that, he might have made at least an average motion picture. For whatever reason, though, his "cinematus interruptus" prevents this movie from building any momentum or sustaining any entertainment.
In the final analysis, all Last Wedding has going for it is Frida Bertrani taking off her top and Tom Scholte giving a performance that's a cute mix of David Letterman and George Constanza. Both of those things are nice, but not nearly enough to make this film worth seeing.
Focusing on three Canadian couples and the disintegration of their relationships, writer/director Bruce Sweeney never offers a reason for any of it. Noah and Zipporah (Benjamin Ratner and Frida Betrani) are getting married after knowing each other for only 6 months, and there's not even the slightest hint of how these two fell in love or why they tying the knot so quickly. Noah's friends Peter and Shane (Tom Scholte and Vincent Gale) already have their own live-in girlfriends.
Peter's been with Leslie (Nancy Sivak) for so long he can't even remember but though there's no sign of anything wrong with their relationship, he cheats on her with a young college student. Here's the thing about that. Some guys do cheat for practically no reason. Those guys cheat all the time. The movie clearly shows that this is the first time Peter's done anything like this. When those guys cheat, there's always a reason. They're frustrated with their career or unhappy with their lover or regretful about their life and the cheating is a reaction to that emotional turmoil. There's no such explanation for Peter's libidinous behavior. This girl reads him a sexually charged poem and it's like he's mesmerized.
Then there's Shane, who's involved with a younger woman named Sarah (Molly Parker). Shane is an architect bitterly unhappy with his profession and his mood is not improved when Sarah graduates with her own degree in architecture and gets a job at a big firm. But again, aside from throwing out some names and jargon from an architectural textbook, there's no rationale for anything he feels or does.
Noah and Zipporah's attraction, Peter's cheating and Shane's anger are at the heart of everything in this movie, but since none of it makes sense, nothing in the film makes sense. All that you can have is little bits of dramatic and comedic shtick and what there is of that in Last Wedding is weirdly disjointed. The story is constantly building to moments of humor or angst, then running away from them as fast as it can. The one time the film sets up a big moment and then pays it off effectively is, unsurprisingly, the best scene in the entire movie by a country mile. If writer/director Sweeney had consistently done that, he might have made at least an average motion picture. For whatever reason, though, his "cinematus interruptus" prevents this movie from building any momentum or sustaining any entertainment.
In the final analysis, all Last Wedding has going for it is Frida Bertrani taking off her top and Tom Scholte giving a performance that's a cute mix of David Letterman and George Constanza. Both of those things are nice, but not nearly enough to make this film worth seeing.