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Film

A disastrous 'Date'

There is little romance and even less comedy in this Debra Messing vehicle, which isn't likely to take her far.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published February 3, 2005

	[Photo: Universal Studios]
	Dermot Mulroney and Debra Messing have trouble mustering much chemistry in The Wedding Date.

Two guys and a duck walk into a bar.

That's all. Just a setup. No punch line, simply an idea that sounds like the beginning of a joke heard before and immediately forgotten.

Pointless, isn't it? And not funny at all.

Just like The Wedding Date, a romantic comedy making that description ironic. There isn't much romance here, but there's more romance than comedy. It's almost like digging through Bridget Jones' wastebasket to crib from diary pages she wadded up and tossed away.

Debra Messing made the movie while on break from TV's Will & Grace. She should pray for a network run longer than Gunsmoke. Stretching her limited appeal wider than a plasma television screen isn't smart, although she isn't the first sitcom star to believe she can make the leap like Tom Hanks and Sally Field.

Messing plays Kat Ellis, one of those inexplicably lonely women Hollywood likes to doodle. Kat is smart, successful and pretty, so the idea that she can't find a date to attend her sister's nuptials in England is a stretch. Actually, it's more like an uncomfortable yoga position.

When the movie begins, Kat has decided that the only solution is hiring a male escort to pose as her lover. Just pose, since using hunky Nick Mercer (Dermot Mulroney) for what he does best might conflict the audience's feelings, and we can't have that. So, for $6,000 she buys the platonic companionship she could have had a gay friend provide for free, without the sexual tension. It's Pretty Woman in reverse, with the gas pedal pushed to the floor.

The immediate plunge into hiring Nick is a sign of how screenwriter Dana Fox skips opportunities for humor. A few minutes of showing Kat withering under the pressure of finding a date, experiencing a few of her bad choices, might be funny. It's a constant problem: We hear about Kat's difficult family, yet there's only one awkward toast by her mother (Holland Taylor) to prove it. Everyone else is either openly supportive or secretly hurtful until the final reel. Kat's former fiance (Jeremy Sheffield) is the best man still carrying a torch for her, but there aren't any scenes of rising competition as Nick - of course - forgets his job description and begins to fall in love.

Without conflict, there can't be comedy. It isn't enough to have Kat describe her family's dysfunction; we need to experience it. The Wedding Date is a too-polite guest, avoiding touchy situations to the point of dullness.

Messing cruises on one neurotic expression and a couple of pratfalls. She may be the only actor working who can't make a sex scene sexy, or at least amusing. Mulroney isn't exactly a ball of eroticism himself. Even if any chemistry can be detected between the two, it's of the second-grade science fair variety.

In the long procession of romantic comedies set against weddings, The Wedding Date is the custodian cleaning up the rice. Two guys and a duck walk into a bar. But they're smart enough not to walk into the theater.

Grade: D-

Director: Clare Kilner

Cast: Debra Messing, Dermot Mulroney, Jeremy Sheffield, Amy Adams, Jack Davenport, Holland Taylor

Screenplay: Dana Fox, based on the novel Asking for Trouble by Elizabeth Young

Rating: PG-13; pervasive sexual references, brief sensuality, profanity, brief nudity

Running time: 86 min.

[Last modified February 2, 2005, 13:32:07]