The Wedding Planner

An even more unfortunate entry into the thwarted-nuptials genre than any of its recent predecessors (The Runaway Bride, My Best Friend's Wedding, The Wedding Singer etc.) it is truly mind-boggling that The Wedding Planner was ever green-lighted for production, let alone how it managed to become a starring vehicle for pop-princess Lopez.

Lopez plays San Francisco's most sought-after wedding planner, a woman who goes about her work with ruthless military efficiency, and is about to become a partner in the business once she lands the account of internet tycoon Wilson-Sampras. However, when she risks her life to save a pair of Gucci shoes, she's nearly killed by a runaway dumpster, only to be rescued by a dashing Matthew McConaghey - with whom she finds true love (awww!) until it's disovered that he is, in fact, her prestigious new client's fiance.

While this ought to be a reasonable pemise for a screwball comedy of sorts, nothing could be further from the truth - the kind of machine-gun dailogue required for such an enterprise is conspicuously absent. On occasion, it feels as if the scriptwriters knocked out twenty minutes' worth of dailogue for a 100-minute movie, in the hope that nobody would notice the awkward silences which punctuate the entire movie. There's no chemistry at all between the leads, and McConaghey's Texan drawl is resolutely unsuited to quick comic timing.

So we're left with a total absence of both romance and comedy in a genre which relies on both: aside from the unconvincing central romance, The Wedding Planner even lacks an amusing supporting cast. The closest it gets is a comedic Italian on a moped, who believes he's engaged to Lopez, and has to be the least flattering screen 'foreigner' since Manuel took a job in Fawlty Towers (but without the inherent humour).

This is a monumental wate of Lopez' box-office pulling-power. Nice floral arrangements, all the same...