“Wedding Daze” DVD Review
It seems that there have been a lot of movies slowly making their way to DVD that were either never released in the US or released under a different title. Both of those previous variables describe Wedding Daze, which never saw a domestic release and was released overseas under the title of The Pleasure of Your Company. While that may make you question its quality, Wedding Daze is every bit the romantic comedy it wants to be…it just also wants to be like every other romantic comedy that garnered itself an R rating.
From Michael Ian Black (star of Comedy Central’s Stella, as well as those wonderful Sierra Mist commercials) comes a romantic comedy starring Jason Biggs and Isla Fischer. When Anderon (Jason Bigg) proposes to his girlfriend, she is met with such surprise she instantly falls over dead. Shocked and disturbed, Anderson retreats into his home and work and doesn’t date at all—until he meets Katie (Isla Fischer). Despite being asked just a day prior to marry her own boyfriend, Katie accepts Anderson’s completely random proposal to a stranger he’d never met in a restaurant and the two immediately run out of the diner to start their life.
Obviously the concept in of itself is absurd, but that’s Michael Ian Black for you. Anyone who has seen his previous work in anything he’s done knows he has quite the dry and deadpan type of humor; unfortunately, he doesn’t translate a whole lot of that to Wedding Daze. That is the films problem, in a nutshell, aside from the occasional quick and snappy joke (of which there are a decent number of) is that it plays it safe for the most part. It’s not quite as edgy as some of Black’s other work in terms of comedy and we’re relegated to the usual potty humor that became so popular after American Pie exploded. Coincidentally, the films logo on the cover looks remarkably similar to American Pie’s…that can’t have anything to do with Jason Biggs being the star of the film, though.
Even though it is ultimately predictable in nearly every way, Wedding Daze is still an admittedly funny film to spend an hour or two with. On more than one occasion I wouldn’t be paying attention to a scene and a particular word would pop out at me that would cause me to pause and rewind it—unless you pay attention to all of the jokes in the film, you’ll likely miss a few of them because they’re in undertones and slip by like jokes from The Office. The film could have become quite a bit more entertaining if it was filled with this type of humor instead of the generic in-your-face bits that rarely warrant more than a giggle.
Biggs and Fisher are a delight on screen together and it’s nice to see Fisher in another role (although she technically shot this prior to The Lookout and Hot Rod, so this predates those other efforts that already saw DVD releases in the last year). They have a decent amount of chemistry with one another to make the relationship believable—as believable as the absurd plot of this movie can be anyway. All of the other actors ring in superb performances and not a single one of them falls flat—in particular I enjoyed Ebon Moss-Bachrach as “Matador.” On more than one occasion Bachrach made me laugh, especially on his meeting of Katie’s parents for the first time.
Still, even in its shortcomings Wedding Daze is entertaining. With a cast of Jason Biggs, Isla Fisher, Joe Pantoliano, Rob Corddry and a handful of others making up a cast of eclectic and overly horny characters that fun to watch, regardless of how stupid or sharp the humor is half of the time. In a nutshell, Wedding Daze is generic in every sense of the word and while it barely earns it’s R rating, it is still a good time to be had. Rent it.
The DVD
Coming from Fox Home Entertainment, Wedding Daze arrives in a single disc amaray case with a…flipper disc!? Yup, continuing their insistence on putting both fullscreen and widescreen versions into one release, Wedding Daze comes to us in the form of the antiquated flipper disc. “Well,” you say, “there must be a lot of extras in order to not fit both transfers on one side!” Well you’d think so, wouldn’t you?
Moving onto the technical portion of the DVD first, we have an animated menu with music over the main menu, while a solid 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer accompanies the disc along with 5.1 Dolby Surround audio. As with most comedies, surrounds are rarely used, but there is the occasional noise that emits from the satellites, usually when one of the songs in the film pop up. The video for the film is quite nice, remaining clean and solid throughout without any smearing or compression that’s really noticeable.
Moving onto the extras we have…deleted scenes and alternate beginning? Even simply clicking on the “Special Features” menu I’m taking to a listing of deleted scenes so there is literally nothing else on this DVD. A commentary by Black would’ve been welcomed—he’s quite the hilarious man by himself, so it seems like a wasted opportunity. Still, the deleted scenes, for what they’re worth, are humorous but not really worth purchasing the DVD for. The alternate opening in particular is tricking, as it isn’t really an alternate opening so much as it is a deleted scene that was cut from the opening.
Overall, while a fine technical presentation, this DVD would’ve gained a few extra points if it wasn’t on an annoying flipper disc (who is seriously going to watch the full screen presentation of the film?). It really didn’t need to be either, as a simple DVD-9 would’ve allocated enough space for both transfers…but I digress. In the end it isn’t a huge deal because there simply isn’t enough on this DVD to warrant a purchase. Like the film itself, this DVD warrants a Rental and nothing more—unless you like to collect romantic comedies that share similar plots, anyway.
Wedding Daze is now available on DVD.