Film (1994) – The Hollywood Reporter

Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”

Gramercy Photos/Courtesy Everett Collection

In honor of the 40th Sundance Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter reviews some of the festival’s biggest premieres. Four Weddings and a Funeral premiered in Park City in 1994 and became a classic of ’90s romantic comedies. THR’s original review is below:

Four weddings and a funeral, which opens tonight as a kickoff to this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is a romantic comedy in the grand old style of hats and champagne. However, beneath its harmonious embellishments and foamy overtones, this Gramercy release is unfortunately riddled with layers of internal cruelty and coated in a mean crudity that saps its overall joy. Still, it should garner some mixed applause among anthology audiences hungry for romantic fun in this mass-oriented era.

Chipper Charles (Hugh Grant) finds himself the best man at many weddings but never the groom. Charles is a breezy, talkative young man with a Tory grace for flattery and a catty ability for cats. He’s a charming person, with a kingdom full of ex-girlfriends, but not all of them are fun girls. At the age of thirty-two, Charles began to question his non-mating habits. Is he destined to live a life of serial monogamy?

As anyone who has served as a clergyman or served the high calling of a wedding bartender knows, love often rears its champagne-filled head at weddings, when the mood, the decorations, and the champagne cast a romantic spell. In fact, Charles was fascinated by such festivity when Carrie (Andie MacDowell), a lady with a big hat and a toothy smile, captured his imagination. The Wedding Hats are in bed, but Carrie suddenly leaves early the next morning, leaving Charles confused.

While screenwriter Richard Curtis devilishly satirizes the pomp and uncertainty of wedding events, and makes delicious jabs at the fickle grandeur of walk-on money as well as the wisdom of unions, his screwball-style writing commits the cardinal sin of romantic comedy writing in that its main romantic characters are not eminently sympathetic.

Unlike the classic screwball romantic comedies of the 1930s, where the female characters were sympathetic and playfully independent, screenwriter Richard Curtis’s female heroine is merely arrogant and manipulative; Their distinction comes, it seems, from sharing the same taste as Lady Dee. Her candor, unfortunately, is limited to disparagingly commenting on her former lovers (32).

Likewise, the male lead, despite his cheerful talk, is irredeemably cruel, demonstrating director Mike Newell’s comedic myopia. – Duane Berg, originally published January 20, 1994.