The Wedding Date (2005)

Directed by Clare Kilner. Starring Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Jeremy Sheffield, Amy Adams, Jack Davenport, Sarah Parish, Holland Taylor, Peter Egan, Jolyon James. [PG-13]

Charmless tripe pretending to be a romantic comedy (though those usually involve some iota of romance and comedy) has the misfortune of featuring a thoroughly off-putting “heroine” that’s insufferable within sixty seconds of her introduction, and nothing she does over the next ninety minutes improves that perception. Simple-minded and self-absorbed single woman Messing is to be the maid of honor at her sister’s (Adams) wedding, a ceremony where Messing’s ex (Sheffield) will be the best man; refusing to show up unattached, she hires an upscale male prostitute (Mulroney) to pose as her boyfriend and, well, you can see exactly where this is going. Bad enough as a crass example of the luv-n-laffs genre, but clumsily attempts sincerity and poignancy in the second half, which only makes it more unbearable. Manages the tricky feat of even making Amy Adams unappealing; Mulroney has a few isolated moments where he’s on the verge of something worthwhile, but the script inevitably fails him at every turn. It’s not good enough to simply decline to RSVP—burn the whole invitation immediately.

18/100