Romancefest 2018: The Wedding Planner

Moving into the 21st century for THE WEDDING PLANNER, directed by Adam Shankman, I noticed a disturbing trend. Lots of movies are sexist, including the romantic ones, and lots of the older ones involve women resigned to catch the “right man,” whether it’s for love or money. But as I moved into the 2000s, I noticed more of these movies aren’t even about finding the right man anymore: they’re just about having an awesome wedding.

Jennifer Lopez stars as the titular WEDDING PLANNER, who wants to become a partner in the wedding planning firm she works for, and plans to do so by snagging a high profile client (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras). She finds this client in the pages of Yahoo magazine which had me saying, “There used to be a Yahoo magazine?” Early 2000s movies are weird because they exist along with the internet, but they’re kinda before people knew how to use it right.

Although Lopez has super powers when it comes to wedding planning (she has abbreviations for everything and wears a vest full of emergency implements and even married Whitney Houston to the notoriously abusive Bobbie Brown!), she is lonely in her personal life. All that changes when she has one of the dumbest meet-cutes ever with Matthew McConaughey, who rescues her from a dumpster that’s about to run her over (don’t ask). Turns out the dude’s a doctor! Yum.

In a twist I didn’t see coming it turns out he’s also the dude the afore-mentioned high profile client is getting ready to marry. Oops! I guess Lopez will have to settle for the Italian dude she knew as a kid (Justin Chambers) who has been unleashed upon her by her meddling father (Alex Rocco).

It’s hard to put into words how bad this movie sucks. It wants us to think McConaughey is quirky for throwing out all the M&Ms except brown ones, and then think it’s cute when Lopez catches this habit as well. But I don’t have time to think about how cute this is because I’m too busy being annoyed that both of these people simply litter unwanted M&Ms all over the ground instead of throwing them into a trash can. Or, it wants me to think it’s cute these people break a dick off of a statue and then bond while they’re trying to put the dick back on, but I’m too busy being like “I can’t believe two adults just broke a fucking statue that doesn’t belong to them and they think it’s funny.”

Well, at least one thing can be said for this movie. A pathological liar I used to work with once claimed the wedding Lopez plans at the end of this film was actually just he and his wife’s wedding, and they used it in the movie because it was so good. So, at least a borderline illiterate, homophobic, racist hayseed thinks Lopez’s weddings are well-planned. That’s a feather in the cap for the production designer.