Directors: Brian De Palma, Wilford Leach
Josephine (The Bride): Jill Clayburgh
Charlie (The Groom): Charles Pfluger
Cecil (groomsman): Robert DeNiro
Alistair (best man): William Finley

Paige and David Coffee Talk The Wedding Party

David: I don't remember anything about this movie. What happened? Maybe we shouldn't have returned it. Maybe we should have watched it. We don't know what happened.
Paige: Yes we do. The groom comes to the girl's family's house the day before the wedding, and madcap zaniess ensues. He misses his own bachelor party, his wife-to-be drives him crazy, and he tries to run away and his best man brings him back.
David: Really? I fell asleep before that part.
Paige: You missed most of it, actually. You fell asleep at 8:30.
David: And you watched this?
Paige: Well, I watched more than you. But I know the plot because I read it off the back of the box.
David: Okay, this movie was a perfect example of someone's student film being promoted as a big Hollywood project. Have you ever seen the original Little Shop of Horrors? A total cast of nobodies, except for Jack Nicholson who was also a nobody but became famous later. He has something in the viscinity of 2 minutes of screen time, as a patient in a semi-sadistic dentist's office. The tapes and DVDs of this film have in huge letters: Starring JACK NICHOLSON. This is a film like that.
David: Robert DeNiro...
Paige: ...turns in a self concious perfomance as the friend of the groom.
David: You've always wanted to say that.
Paige: I didn't know I always wanted to say that, but there it was. I plucked the golden apple from the tree of opportunity.
David: [types fast and furious]
Paige: The cover of the tape that we rented has a picture of him in a tuxedo next to a picture of Jill Clayburgh (the bride) in full bridal regalia with no mention of the poor schmo who actally played the groom. Leading us to believe, stupidly, that Robert DeNiro is the groom. Frankly, considering what the movie does to the actors, in this movie, it's just as well. Even though the actor playing the groom sank into obscurity, he can take comfort in the fact that at least his name won't forever be associated with this dreck.

We choose to believe that the true and mortal awfulness of this movie is the result of someone's idiotic idea to publish De Palma's bad bad bad hideously horribly bad student work.

Also, we didn't like the movie so much.

I did float the suggestion that perhaps the reason that the filming of this b-and-w pic was all herky-jerky and strange was in homage to the early works of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. But David, the ex-film student, wasn't buying any of it. David postulated that they were doing it because it saves film to shoot at high speed. But I didn't think that that sounded like a really likely reason either. So we had to go back to my truly mortally bad theory.

From what I remember, the hallmark of this flick is stilted dialogue. I say "what I remember" because not only did we both fall asleep during this movie, but the tape actually tried to commit suicide. All of a sudden everything went stripey, and then the audio went out. We fast forwarded and rewound it a few times, took out the tape, stuck in another one, verified that it was the tape and not the machine, then stuck the tape back in, which ultimately got it to work again. But we figure that the fact that the tape that this film was printed on so thoroughly rejected the movie is perhaps the most revelatory thing we could write in terms of a recommendation. Also, we'd warn against this movie because in light of our experience, we'd have to say that watching it can't be good for your VCR.

But if you like awkward lines awkwardly delivered, you'll love this. There's one scene in particular, where the groom is hanging out in the bride's room, hoping for some nooky, and they keep getting interrupted by some aged nanny type. She was sort of like Frau Blucher (insert whinny here) in Young Frankenstein, only not actually funny. Anyway, the scene was almost like a porn movie except the dialogue wasn't as good and there was no sex and the bride kept asking him the groom he liked her granny nightgown.

Then there was the scene where she makes him carrot juice and starts telling him all of the scary things she's going to do to/for him when they're married and he starts to panic. That would be the real beginning of this movie's arc, where we wonder, will he marry her? Or will he really run away? What will I have for lunch tomorrow? But nothing matches the tension of the scene where the groomsmen forget to fetch the groom for his own bachelor party and the groom ends up slowly sinking lower and lower under his sheet. And I think that the ceiling might have been leaking, Chinese water torture-style. Or that may have just been the effect of watching the movie. It's hard to say.

Bottom line: Boy and Girl have already met and decided to get married. Only rent this if you want to both fall asleep and trash your VCR. Otherwise, ignore Gene Shalit's comment on the box, kids, and stay away.