Empire Magazine Greatest Movies List - # 375: Four Weddings and a Funeral

A wedding is a situation ripe for comedy, something Richard Curtis obviously knew when he wrote “Four Weddings and a Funeral” which was directed by Mike Newell in 1994. It began a frequent collaboration between Curtis and the movie’s protagonist, Hugh Grant, who became a star in North America thanks to the movie’s success. Nowadays Grant’s character seems all too familiar as he has played similar bumbling romantics in many other comedies in the decade following the movie, but the first time around you can’t deny he is a perfect fit for Curtis’ writing.

The first time I watched this movie was during family movie night with my mom, my brother and I. Of course my mom picked that title since she was a fan of Grant. I was sold on my love of Rowan Atkinson (BlackAdder) who plays a priest who is clearly not ready for the job. I had never been to a wedding yet, so this was a bit like watching a movie set in Cuba: you’ve never been there, but you might someday. As it turns out, I did go there in 2011 when I attended my first wedding, that is to say my cousin’s wedding. It didn’t have as many funny situations as this movie, but of course there were of few friends with embarrassing speeches. It didn’t sell me on the whole wedding concept, but on the plus side: open bar.

As the title says, “Four Weddings…” follows Englishman Charles (Grant) as he attends three weddings, a funeral, and finally his own wedding. In the first wedding Charles acts as the best man, while he and his collection of single friends wonder if they will ever get married themselves. Charles meets Carrie (Andie MacDowell) an American woman living in England only for the wedding. They have a one-night stand and ponder on what could have been since they will probably never see each other again.

Carrie returns to England for the second wedding, only this time she is engaged to Sir Hamish Banks (Corin Redgrave), a wealthy Scottish politician. It’s bad enough that the woman you might be in love with is engaged, but engaged to a man with a “sir” in front of his name? Feeling dejected, Charles finds himself at a table with several of his ex-girlfriends who share embarrassing stories about him.

The third wedding is Carrie’s, and oddly enough Charles is invited. Despite the fact that Charles and Carrie keep running into each other at weddings, and that Charles does awkwardly declare his love for her before the wedding, there is no indication that these two are simply meant to be together. Carrie’s engagement is a realistic story development, just like Charles rekindling a relationship with an ex-girlfriend in between weddings. There is no such thing as “meant to be.” There are possibilities and failures. Maybe this relationship will work, maybe it won’t. When you say, “I do” you’re just throwing the dices.

Each wedding in the movie has the classic wedding characters: the best man with the inappropriate speech, the immature groomsmen, and a priest who keeps messing up his lines (Rowan Atkinson). One of the funniest situations involves Charles getting stuck in a bathroom while the bride and groom are having sex in the adjacent room. That will make for an awkward conversation the next time they see each other over drinks.

Of course there is also that moment when the priest says, “if anyone believes these two should not marry, let him speak now or forever hold his piece.” Someone does raise his hand, but it is Charles’ brother, who, even though he is deaf, does say something no bride ever wants to hear, even if it is said with sign language.

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #147: Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) has many of the master director’s signature elements: spies, lies, a handsome leading man, a domineering mother, and of course a MacGuffin. As it is set after World War II the villains are logically former Nazis, but the plot is so tense in many scenes that it remains an effective thriller to this day. It also bears a huge influence on John Woo’s Mission Impossible 2 , which retains plot elements and similar dialogue, but of course has more explosions than all of Hitchcock’s films put together. Notorious is so well-made it can be studies in film classes, which is exactly what I did while taking a course on Hollywood Cinema 1930-1960 during the summer of 2009 at the University of British Columbia. As this is Hitchcock we are talking about here, there are subtler things to analyze than explosions in Notorious , no offense to the skills of Mr. John Woo. Famously there is a kissing scene between stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman that seemingly las...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #91: Return of the Jedi

If you want someone to give you death stares, tell a die-hard Star Wars fan the original trilogy is not perfect. I am however going to take a risk and write that if there is one major flaw with Return of the Jedi (1983) is a lack of imagination when it comes to the central plot. After the good guys blow up the Death Star in the first movie, the bad guys are almost done building a brand new one, which of course needs to be destroyed again in more or less the same way. Richard Marquand may be directing this time, but it was still George Lucas writing. Plot hole aside, as a kid you can’t help but have fun as the good guys join forces with a tribe of living teddy bears to get the job done. Like many people in their early 30s, I was introduced to the first Star Wars trilogy by my parents who had recorded the movies, commercials included, when they were showing one night on TV. Upon first viewing, a few things stick out in the mind of a young boy watching Return of the Jedi such as:...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #85: Blue Velvet

Exactly how do you describe a David Lynch movie? He is one of the few directors whose style is so distinctive that his last name has become an adjective. According to Urban Dictionary, the definition of Lynchian is: “having the same balance between the macabre and the mundane found in the works of filmmaker David Lynch.” To see a prime example of that adjective film lovers need look no further than Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), which does indeed begin in the mundane before slowly sinking in macabre violence. My first introduction to the world of David Lynch was through his ground breaking, but unfortunately interrupted, early 1990s TV series Twin Peaks . This was one of the first television shows to grab viewers with a series-long mystery: who killed Laura Palmer? A mix of soap opera, police procedural, and the supernatural, it is a unique show that showed the darkness hidden in suburbia and remains influential to this day. Featuring Kyle MacLachlan as an FBI investigator with a l...

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