FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL

"Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed."

An efficient bit of romantic comedy storytelling, Four Weddings and a Funeral is literally just that. The day begins, and Charles (Hugh Grant) sleeps in yet again. He falls disheveled out of bed and into his formal clothes as his roommate Scarlett (Charlotte Coleman) hauls him into her Mini, and they race off to meet their motley group of unmarried friends (James Fleet, Simon Callow, John Hannah, and Kristin Scott Thomas, among others) to toast yet another couple's happiness.

Foppish and stuttering Charles is not exactly a prize, but his friends adore him and the ladies tend to fall for him despite the fact that he is completely and utterly unable to settle down. But at the movie's first wedding, he meets a bewitching American woman named Carrie (Andie MacDowell). After some playful flirting followed by a one night stand, you just know—and deliciously expect—that they will run into each other again at the next wedding.

Looking at Four Weddings and a Funeral now, it is funny to see how things have changed in the years since the movie was a big hit in 1994. Four Weddings pretty much launched Hugh Grant into stardom. The great thing is that Hugh Grant is not just a skinny, pale, floppy haired British boy with crooked teeth in the movie, but he has absolutely no muscle tone when he goes shirtless for a love scene. Seriously, is a soft belly even allowed for male actors anymore? Also, Four Weddings, with its stellar and scene-stealing supporting cast, raised the bar, showing that romantic comedies could be clever and funny. For awhile (at least), these types of ensemble rom-coms were better than they had any right to be (see Notting Hill, About a Boy, Love, Actually, etc.) until they started to stink again in recent years (see Valentine's Day and their ilk).

Four Weddings soars whenever the story highlights the friendships in the group. Simon Callow and John Hannah play the gay couple who are (somewhat naively) lumped with the others as singletons (though later Charles says to another friend that he just realized the two men were basically as married as you could get... um... duh!). James Fleet is the buddy who is super-rich but a total nerd with the ladies. And bitter, spinsterish Kristin Scott Thomas (who also saw her Hollywood bankability soar after this flick) steals every scene she is in with her withering tongue and smart-girl sexiness.

But now for the weak link: Boy oh boy was Andie MacDowell miscast as the love interest. There is little to no chemistry between Carrie and Charles (or MacDowell and Grant, for that matter). Carrie comes across as a pushy aggressive American that is out to snap spindly Charles in half. And when it comes to a climactic profession-of-love moment, MacDowell nails it. That is, she nails her line to the wall, with neon arrows and flashing lights to highlight one of the most woodenly awful line readings in romantic movie history: "Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed." Every time I see this scene, I burst into howls of delighted laughter. And too bad for that moment, because, really, the rest of Four Weddings and a Funeral is actually quite delightful.

BLU-RAY NOTES

Like many Blu-Ray releases, the extras are just the pre-packaged ones that you can find on the DVD release. There is a making-of featurette, a documentary called "The Wedding Planners" (with interviews from 2004, aka the 10th anniversary of the film), a featurette called "Two Actors and a Director" with Mike Newell talking about the casting of his leads, some deleted scenes, and some promotional spots.