The Wilde Wedding | Glenn Close and John Malkovich strive to revive the remarriage comedy

By Jason Best
( What's on TV )
published

The Wilde Wedding Patrick Stewart Glenn Close
(Image credit: © 2017 Table Manners, LLC. ALL)

The Wilde Wedding Patrick Stewart Glenn Close

Screwball revival.

Back in the screwball heyday of The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday, Hollywood hit a winning streak with the comedy of remarriage. However, The Wilde Wedding, an attempt to revive the genre for the 21st Century, falls tragically flat.

The starry cast assembled here makes this flop even more of a shame, with Glenn Close as a retired film star about get married for the fourth time, Patrick Stewart as her intended, a roguish English writer, and John Malkovich as her first husband, a celebrated stage actor whose career has been overshadowed by his former spouse.

Throw in the likes of Minnie Driver, Jack Davenport and Orange is the New Black’s Yael Stone and you would expect some comic sparkle. But this clumsily plotted effort just isn’t very funny.

Certificate 15. Runtime 95 mins. Director Damian Harris

Available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from Universal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwdZUFYiJU0

 

Jason Best
Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.