The plot of this movie in which a redheaded actress goes to a wedding as a bridesmaid with a phony date and is really in love with a member of the wedding party, and stars Dermot Mulroney, might sound a little familiar to you. If it does then you've probably seen 1997's My Best Friend's Wedding. And even though this movie isn't an exact replica of that one, it definitely has an air of having seen it all before only done better feeling about it.
Debra Messing, of Will & Grace fame, stars as Kat, and given the sitcom level of jokes here, I'm sure her long run on that show helped her feel right at home. Mulroney, who played the groom in that earlier film, plays the male escort Kat hires to accompany her to her sister's wedding. It seems that Kat's ex-fiancé is the best man and she's still in love with him, even though he dumped her. Thus added to the shades of My Best Friend's Wedding, we have echoes of Pretty Woman. There's no cliché from any romantic comedy of the past twenty years that this movie isn't afraid to borrow, water down, and then recycle.
One of the weakest plot points in the film is also its central premise. Kat hires a male escort but then acts as if he were forced upon her. While staying at her parents' house for the wedding Kat is forced to share a bed with Mulroney. She prepares for the night as if she were a sixteen-year-old virgin rather than a thirty-something grown woman, by piling pillows and blankets in between them, apparently lest their bodies should accidentally brush against each other. The sight of him through a shower curtain and the view of his naked body is enough to send her into flights of panic. I'm sorry, isn't this the grown woman who hired this guy? The woman who was in a relationship with a man for seven years prior to this? Why is she suddenly acting like Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30?
As for the inevitable romance, no reason is given to explain why these two people fall in love. Mulroney, who must have been hired by dozens of desperate women before Kat, has sex with her once and then apparently wakes up, deeply in love. Kat, who, like all women in these movies, can't be happy without a man, is so desperate that I guess it's not surprising that she falls in love with a male prostitute, but maybe it's not her heart talking to her, but her biological clock.
Oh sure, there are a few lighthearted moments and some laughs to be had in amongst the clichés, but nothing to justify spending $10 to see. If you want to see Debra Messing playing a single neurotic New Yorker all you have to do is stay home on Thursday night.
