Never have I ever felt more irate, more disappointed, more annoyed by an ending of a romance film than I was when I finished watching Mike Newell’s Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Now don’t take that little rant up there as a sign that I think this movie suck. The truth is far from it, I think in term of romance film Four Weddings and a Funeral could be considered one of the best. It was unique, it was groundbreaking, it was entertaining and funny, it has amazing acting, amazing characters, and amazing chemistry between the characters. All combined result in an amazingly charming romance flick to be enjoyed by all, except for the ending.
Before we get to the ending, a quick look at the story of the film. The film revolves mainly around a group of friends while they attend, you guess it, four weddings and one funeral. And that’s it, there are bits of pieces more but the movie is basically about this group going and socializing at weddings.
In filmmaking, there is a saying of ‘show don’t tell’ implying that, in order to engage the audience more the filmmakers need to lessen expositional phrase in place of just showing the audience the story as it is happening. Well, this movie is the perfect example of the opposite of that phrase. We learned the backstory of the characters through the story they tell, we see little to none about their experience, about their past or even about their individuals' personalities. But, this was done so brilliantly that it doesn’t feel that the movie was looking down at the audience. I never once felt that the movie was assuming that I was too dumb to understand what’s going on even though they keep explaining things that are happening in front of me.
The setting in this regard helps a lot. Imagine yourself at someone else wedding, what would you do? Well besides stuffing yourself with as much food as you can that is. That’s right, talking. A wedding is one of the biggest social events in a person life, so of course, socializing would be a big part of it. In most movies, too many expositions hurt because it doesn’t feel natural, people don’t just suddenly shout out personal information, that in most case relevant to the plot, out of the blue. But, at weddings they did and people do it all the time so it never felt forced.
But of course, for every good thing that this movie has done, they have to ruin it with the most undeserving of a happy ending. The ending felt forced and out of place to the tone of the movie and it felt like the director was forced to put that ending because, well at that time the perfect happy ending where everybody lives happily ever after is the go-to for romantic movies.
[Spoilers Here]
Long story short, the main character Charles (Hugh Grant) met Carrie (Andie MacDowell) at a wedding and they went to have a one night stand. We basically follow where their relationship across the aforementioned four weddings and a funeral until they get their desired ending. Here lies the problem, those four weddings and one funeral did not occurred at a span of a couple of days, it spanned a couple of years and those two characters had literally, bar one scene, only met at the aforementioned weddings and funeral. How in the hell do we suppose to root for these two to be together, they are literally strangers to each other and by the end of the movie they still don’t know anything about the other, baring the general stuff.
The strangers in love story could work but it mostly revolves around those two characters getting to know each other along the way or we saw one of the characters proving themselves to the other. But this movie has none of that, Charles did not go through significant growth as a character and again both of them I counted has only met about 5-6 times before their eventual happy ending. This doesn’t make any sense what so ever.
So, with that said, I do recommend this movie for you to watch. It funny, it has charisma, great acting, and a great story and even if I don’t like the ending, it is not so bad that it sours the movie for me.
Have a watch and have a good time.
My Score: 7/10
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