just watch it!

Amateur movie with Big budget

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Last Wedding just wore me out. There's an obvious level of talent here, more than enough to produce a smart, funny and/or touching little film. I kept waiting for that movie to take shape, but it never does. Spending 100 minutes watching interesting ideas of characters that never coalesce, sitting through scenes that go out of their way to avoid most of the meaningful drama in the story, listening to dialog that almost always says either too much or too little, it's as though Last Wedding were made up of the deleted scenes that weren't good enough to make it into a mediocre indy flick about modern relationships.Focusing on three Canadian couples and the disintegration of their relationships, writer/director Bruce Sweeney never offers a reason for any of it. Noah and Zipporah (Benjamin Ratner and Frida Betrani) are getting married after knowing each other for only 6 months, and there's not even the slightest hint of how these two fell in love or why they tying the knot so quickly. Noah's friends Peter and Shane (Tom Scholte and Vincent Gale) already have their own live-in girlfriends.Peter's been with Leslie (Nancy Sivak) for so long he can't even remember but though there's no sign of anything wrong with their relationship, he cheats on her with a young college student. Here's the thing about that. Some guys do cheat for practically no reason. Those guys cheat all the time. The movie clearly shows that this is the first time Peter's done anything like this. When those guys cheat, there's always a reason. They're frustrated with their career or unhappy with their lover or regretful about their life and the cheating is a reaction to that emotional turmoil. There's no such explanation for Peter's libidinous behavior. This girl reads him a sexually charged poem and it's like he's mesmerized.Then there's Shane, who's involved with a younger woman named Sarah (Molly Parker). Shane is an architect bitterly unhappy with his profession and his mood is not improved when Sarah graduates with her own degree in architecture and gets a job at a big firm. But again, aside from throwing out some names and jargon from an architectural textbook, there's no rationale for anything he feels or does.Noah and Zipporah's attraction, Peter's cheating and Shane's anger are at the heart of everything in this movie, but since none of it makes sense, nothing in the film makes sense. All that you can have is little bits of dramatic and comedic shtick and what there is of that in Last Wedding is weirdly disjointed. The story is constantly building to moments of humor or angst, then running away from them as fast as it can. The one time the film sets up a big moment and then pays it off effectively is, unsurprisingly, the best scene in the entire movie by a country mile. If writer/director Sweeney had consistently done that, he might have made at least an average motion picture. For whatever reason, though, his "cinematus interruptus" prevents this movie from building any momentum or sustaining any entertainment.In the final analysis, all Last Wedding has going for it is Frida Bertrani taking off her top and Tom Scholte giving a performance that's a cute mix of David Letterman and George Constanza. Both of those things are nice, but not nearly enough to make this film worth seeing.

If the British Columbia film industry has any doubts, I'd say that Last Wedding is a good reason to realize we're moving in the right direction. Director Bruce Sweeney brings his own script to life with a cast of fairly unknown actors [something I find refreshing from the blockbuster Hollywood-isms of today's movie scene.] The story details not only the lives of Noah and Zipporah, a new couple to be wed, but also gives the accounts of two related couples, and the suffering and activities which take them through the course of the film.The actual depth explored isn't uncannily dynamic, but the topic matter, though tired and constantly overdone, is not forced here. The lives and events in Last Wedding are realistic, and not over-dramatized, but sometimes come off as a little awry. The main point, though, is that they are humourous, and that is all which seems to matter in this film.Last Wedding ends rather abruptly, but it didn't really bother me. I had seen all I needed to, and if the film went on, it may have turned a little cliche. I think the BC Industry gets props here, and certainly proves point that you don't need big names for an interesting and fun film.

*I don't think this contains spoilers, but it is pretty involved and so may reveal aspects of the plot that you would rather have surprise you. If you'd rather go in to the film without preconceptions, don't read on.*Apparently, Last Wedding received critical acclaim for its strong character development, its taut atmosphere, its remarkable dialogue, and its portrayal of Vancouver as Vancouver (a novel idea, considering the plethora of appalling Hollywood films that routinely convert the city into San Francisco, Los Angeles, or even Hong Kong). Despite good acting and attentive, often beautiful cinematography, however, Last Wedding is a hollow, almost nonsensical study of the banal dysfunction of urban social life. Did I mention that it's a comedy? The film is generally funny, especially in the first half, and pleasing in its visual familiarity (So very Vancouver, and there is a Winnipeg Jets cap, and a quintessential trip to the cabin to fish . . . ).But:Character development is irritatingly imbalanced. This may be because the film was shot over three consecutive summers and so fell victim to the intermittent availability of actors and crew. Under these circumstances balance and continuity must be challenging to attain, and the film suffers as a result. Of the three couples represented, only one is explored enough to lead the audience across the rickety bridge between motivation and action. Sarah, played beautifully by Molly Parker, is an ambitious young architect who lands her dream job fresh out of university despite a slump in the market, and who must struggle with her idealistic spouse's resentment of both her success and her ethical and aesthetic perspectives regarding architecture. The scenes involving this couple are brilliantly executed, and appear (uniquely) topically rooted in Vancouver's identity. The other two couples are another story. One is ploddingly two-dimensional: Randy English Professor cheats on Luddite Librarian Live-In with Ambitious Sexpot Student. From a narrative perspective at the very least, this subplot climaxes prematurely. The third couple's story is utter nonsense, and seems to have been included only as an ill-advised attempt at comic relief. The wedding of the title is that of Noah and Zipporah (actually, the title is a reference to the wedding before theirs, but to theirs by inference. Don't ask, it seems like an arbitrary titling decision. No surprise, really). Noah works in waterproofing supplies and lives in Zipporah's obligatorily leaky condo. Vancouverites should know what I mean when I say this is dime-store irony. Zipporah is a beautiful, sensual fashion plate with delusions of becoming a country music icon. Nothing about them, from their tense initial interactions through their rushed wedding and the arbitrary deterioration of their sanity and their relationship, makes anything approaching sense. We laugh at Zipporah and Noah, not with them, and only because we're expected to.In all these cases, the only dubious trait shared by the characters is their inability to interact functionally with one another. And why can't they? They are, at any given point, selfish, thick-witted, spiteful, and actually insane. I found empathy for the characters unattainable, as they lacked emotional depth and the motivations for their actions and statements were inadequately explored. This could in fact set up an interesting motive for the location of Last Wedding. The city of Vancouver is often characterized as beautiful but new and soulless, without history or personality - in Douglas Coupland's words, a city of glass (and maybe this isn't how Doug meant it, but it works). Perhaps that is the link between the setting and the characters in Last Wedding. Bruce Sweeney's characters are people of glass, by turns transparent, brittle, distant. Unfortunately, this representation is so haphazard and incongruous that it fails to make its purpose clear to the viewer. Perhaps it wasn't intended at all?Last Wedding is an awkward, senseless collage of humour, depraved selfishness, and Vancouverism. Make of that what you will.

Last Wedding is a slow moving heart warmer. Three men in a tub: rub-a-dub-dub. The movie is about how they messed up with the loves of their lives, but it isn't painful in the least. You'll laugh all the way through. The acting is draws you in, so you are fascinated by these real life characters. Your heart goes out to them, despite their glaring faults. The directing is expert. The editing and camera angles play up the slow building drama to the max. If there is a fault, it is the lack of a powerful dramatic arc. However, some would call that refreshing. The lack of "special effects" was fine, too. There was no shortage of lasting lovable memories.