The Wedding Date Review

Brace yourself Bridget - there's a new girl in town and she doesn't mind paying for it. A date that is. You see New Yorker Kat Ellis (Debra Messing) is facing the unenviable duty of attending her sister's wedding in jolly old London. The big snag though is that the Best Man is the ex-boyfriend who so cruelly dumped Kat a couple of years earlier so what better way of making him jealous than by hiring the Big Apple's most eligible male escort (Dermot Mulroney) to go as her date. And soon the scene is set for romance, revelations and the mother of all hen nights.

Whenever an American film that is set in the UK is put before you, a shiver immediately shoots up your spine as the thought of endless shots of Big Ben, red pillar-boxes and Buckingham Palace is forefront in your mind. Fortunately it's home-grown feel and the gaggle of Brit co-stars (Jack Davenport, Jeremy Sheffield and Sarah Parish all feature) help "The Wedding Date" avoid this potential litany of English cliches. But seeing as that it's the nicest thing one can say about the movie, it doesn't bode well.

Probably the biggest fault within "The Wedding Date" is the fact that we simply don't warm to Nick, Kat's rent-a-date. Seeing as he's meant to be making all the women swoon and all the blokes jealous, he seems very distant and dull and there's no palpable chemistry between Mulroney and Messing - a huge no-no in any romcom situation.

First time director Clare Kilner does her best with what she's got but watching this Bridget Jones-lite style movie - which is based on Elizabeth Young's book "Asking For Trouble" - does make you think that it probably reads better on the page than it comes across on the screen.