by cucumber martini
It’s not a huge surprise that Netflix is doing quite well during our Corona quarantine. Given this, it is also not shocking that the films Netflix is featuring on everyone’s feeds are quickly skyrocketing in viewership, no matter how unoriginal and shitty they are. Enter Love Wedding Repeat.
A clip of Love Wedding Repeat would play each time I logged onto Netflix. It looked dumb, but the cast appeared to be largely British, and I have an annoying affinity for all things British. I decided to tune in.
The film was worse than I had expected. It was not a simple, silly, fun rom-com. It was an absolute failure of originality and humor. Also, in this day and age, the love story at the center of the plot makes zero sense.
At the beginning of the film, we are introduced to a lame man (Sam Claflin) and a woman (Olivia Munn – basically playing herself) who meet in Rome and realize they have strong feelings for each other. Though never revealed to the audience, I assume their bond blossomed over their shared love for jazz, golden retrievers, Ansel Adams, and scarves that serve no purpose.
While having a romantic night walk through Rome, the couple’s love is cut short by the Claflin’s old classmate walking past. Claflin and Munn are so overwhelmed by another person appearing on the scene that they forget they are living in the 21st century and the myriad communication methods available to them and depart from each other without exchanging any contact info. In addition, Munn plays a good friend of Claflin’s sister. I find their desperately sad departure so pathetic in light of how easy their reconnection would be IRL.
As a master stalker of anyone I come into contact with, I would have agreed to meet up with the interloping classmate later and begged for my new lover’s number, Insta handle, Facebook, email, and parents’ names, so I could claw my way into their lives and stay there.
After an unrealistic contactless three years, Claflin and Munn are reunited at Claflin’s sister’s wedding. Unfortunately, a sequence of easily avoidable problems continues to torment the couple. I do not have the time (kidding, I’m in quarantine) or care to delve into the lack of humor and utter redundancy of every character in the film. For the purpose of this review, I will focus on how any common-sense Degenerate could have quickly remedied and made the most of the idiotic series of events that unfold.
First off, we have the man who won’t stop third-wheeling Munn and Claflin. Worse than just being a third wheel, the man is socially inept, fantastically tone-deaf, and a bit of a slut shamer. I think the writers were attempting to make him lovably shy and awkward but failed miserably.
This new interloper continually creeps on Munn, who is just so kind-hearted she cannot definitively tell him to GTFO. Munn plays a journalist who was kidnapped by the Taliban and cannot muster the courage to tell this man to step off. The man suggests that as a journalist, Munn may have been at fault for her kidnapping as she willingly went to Afghanistan. In the same breadth, the man comments on how the Taliban would not have been pleased with the low-cut floral dress Munn is currently wearing at the wedding.
This man’s interactions with Munn are far from funny and rather belittling and misogynistic. If I had a penny for every time I called a man out for being a misogynistic prick, I would be getting Seamless every night instead of having my usual can of beans. This man poses a huge threat to Claflin and Munn’s reintroduction as his lurking serves as the only “comedy” the writers could come up with for the first half of the film. Any Degenerate would have squashed this little fucker with the same ease and poise used while quarantine-drinking in bed all day.
The second “huge” problem to arise is the arrival of Claflin’s sister’s one-time lover, who is there to put an end to the wedding. The man, as I can’t recall his name, we will call Blow. Blow, as his name suggests, is hopped up on loads of coke. I have one word for this guy. Underutilized.
Claflin and his sister hatch a plan to drug Blow with a strong sedative the sister uses to sleep. Being the hackneyed movie this is, the sedative winds up in multiple other people’s glasses (the Repeat in the title of the film points to the multiple realities depicted. In each one, someone else takes the sedative. OoOoOO whacky!). The sedative leads its victims to make a series of unlikely and very unfunny missteps.
Back to Blow. This guy has loads of coke. The first thing any Degenerate would do would be to befriend this well-equipped gentleman and save the day by carefully administering some lines to the comatose characters. Also, why were all the guests not on coke already? Anyway, none of the characters think of this and instead lock Blow in a closet. Smart. This brings me right to my final gripe (that I care to discuss) with the film.
While Claflin is the unlucky consumer of the sleeping sedative in one reality, he keeps falling asleep while Munn is trying to talk to him. Rude. Instead of being an open Degenerate and being honest about the drugs he is on, he keeps it secret. As discussed, Claflin does not have the wherewithal to use the magical gifts of coke to reverse the sedative. Instead, he enlists a friend to help him throw up the sedative. Claflin begs the friend to put his finger down his throat. Excuse me? Everyone knows it’s best to use the handle of a utensil to do this. And there were so many nice ones at this wedding. Of course, this plan doesn’t work, and Munn walks in on what looks to be Claflin sucking his friend off. Not funny and highly impractical.
Despite falling asleep while Munn discusses her mom dying of cancer, Claflin manages to win her over. At the close of the movie, they still have not exchanged contact info, and I have little faith they have learned their lesson.
This movie brought me great pain and displeasure. Nothing remotely interesting, endearing, original, or funny took place. There were no twists or turns or surprise coke orgies. I don’t think I’m alone in saying I much rather watch Sam Claflin lead Birmingham in a fascist revolution in Peaky Blinders than battle his way through a series of endlessly bromidic problems a Degenerate could fix in an instant.
I give this film half a star.
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