Delayed Reaction: The Wedding Year

[Note: This is part of a project I'm calling "A Century in a Month". The idea is that I'm going to start with a movie from about 100 years ago and pick a series of connected films until I get to the present. The rules I set this time are release years, per IMDB, can't be more than 5 years apart. I can't repeat the same connection although I can reuse the same type of connection. That means if I use "movies directed by Scorsese" to connect two, I can't use Scorsese as a connection again but I can use a director as a linking element again. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this, but it seems like a fun game.]

Connection to Goodbye to All That: Both Star Anna Camp

 

Premise: A commitment-phobic women gets put to the test when her longtime boyfriend and her get invited to numerous weddings within a year.

 

I get annoyed when people talk about the death of the RomCom as if people aren’t still making them. It’s true that they aren’t a force in the box office anymore. The leads aren’t often A-list stars, and they definitely can’t reach A-list status by starring in RomComs. The budgets aren’t the same as they used to be. But, it doesn’t take a lot of looking to find a half dozen movies like The Wedding Year that hit all the right beats and star a half dozen actors you recognize.

 

That said, I do think the RomCom has run into a problem similar to the multi-cam comedy. Since the mid-2000s, the laugh track comedy, shot on a sound stage in front of an audience has largely disappeared. There are only a few network hold outs. If you watch the few that are left, they aren’t very good. Not compared to the days of Friends or Cheers or Everybody Loves Raymond. What happens is that fewer people make that kind of sitcom, so fewer people know how to make that kind of sitcom. Institutional knowledge that was once passed down from I Love Lucy to The Mary Tyle Moore Show to Family Ties gets lost. So now, if someone actually does want to make a good multi-cam sitcom, there are fewer people around to learn from.

 

I think the same has happened to RomComs in a lot of ways. Even when the casting and the beats are right, something feels off. They don’t look right or the chemistry is off just a little. I liked The Wedding Year, even though it has the feel of a picture that was copied, then the copy was copied, and that copy was copied, etc.

 

The important thing is that Sarah Hyland and Tyler James Williams are winsome enough leads. Both have sitcom backgrounds and know how to hit their marks. I think Tyler James Williams is better at it but not distractingly so. The nature of the movie means the cast is big and most actors aren’t needed for more than a couple scenes. I enjoyed Wanda Sykes injecting some life into it a couple times. Anna Camp and Matt Shively are solid RomCom sidekicks. I don’t have strong feeling about the movie. You’ve seen versions of it before. But it’s a 90-minute RomCom that works like a RomCom should.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend