Confetti is an incredibly well-made British mockumentary featuring a popular wedding magazine and their annual competition for the best wedding. This year, the spoiled and lazy owner of Confetti magazine, Antoni (Jimmy Carr) jumps in after slacking off for the majority of his career and decides he wants to mix it up a bit, while the woman who runs the entire magazine, Vivienne (Felicity Montagu) is left to do all of the work and deal with all of the mishaps. Rather than picking a boring and nowhere near unique wedding like they've done every year in the past, they settle on having a competition for the most bizarre (and possibly most embarrassing) wedding.
The winners will receive a beautiful house and will be fleeting stars while they're on the front cover of Confetti.
After a mountain of interviews filled to the brim with crazy ideas from some very odd couples, the team narrowed it down to three: a competitive and sporty couple who want their wedding to be hideously tennis themed, a sweet couple who want their wedding to be based off of glamorous 1930s musicals, and couple of Naturists that want to get married in nothing but their birthday suits.
The tennis players, Isabelle (Meredith MacNeill) and Josef (Stephen Mangan), are rude, spoiled, and immature with hardly any friends and some serious pre-marital problems. Their overly competitive natures force them to do some pretty outrageous things in the hopes of winning. Then there's the ever so sweet Sam (Jessica Stevenson) and Matt (Martin Freeman) with the musical themed wedding. Unfortunately for this couple, the girl's sister and mother want to barge their ways in, taking over everything and making it as difficult as possible for not only the two lovebirds to plan their dream wedding, but for the wedding planners as well. The final couple, the Naturists, Joanna (Olivia Colman) and Michael (Robert Webb), live in something similar to a nudist colony and spend the majority of their time stark ass naked. Even though they were chosen as contestants, the magazine soon develops a problem with them wanting to be in the buff and featured in their magazine.
All three of the twosomes get the same wedding planners to work with: an adorable gay couple, Archie (Vincent Franklin) and Gregory (Jason Watkins), that couldn't be more excited to plan these weddings. What with a big budget from a successful magazine, who knows what kind of elaborate and crazy weddings they could throw! Their spirits are quickly dampened throughout the film when they learn more and more of the restrictions that are being placed on the planning. All of the weddings have to be on the same day, in the same venue, and there's a strict budget. Not only do they have to deal with the magazine holding them back, there are a ton of little ridiculous requests and demands that pop up from the couples.
First off, I would like to firmly state that this is NOT a chick flick. Yeah, there are weddings; yeah there's an extremely gay couple; yeah, I almost cried a few times, but that doesn't mean this is a chick flick. There is a plethora of quality comedy in this movie that anyone can appreciate. I've mentioned before that I'm a huge fan of mockumentaries and after seeing this one I still have yet to be horribly let down by any one.
I don't think the movie could have been cast anymore fantastically; all of the actors did a wonderful job of portraying their characters, I wasn't disappointed by a single one (which is rare because there's usually one character/actor in every movie that just gripes my ass). They all had so much chemistry on screen, which was essential in making this movie a success.
I know this is really cliche for a movie review, but this one really has something in it for everyone (except kids as there's some serious nudity).
The "newlyweds-to-be" encountered so many different problems throughout the film that led to hearty laughs, misty eyes, and long lost happy endings. I walked out of the theater with a kind of resurrected giddiness that had died in me a long time ago.
"Confetti" opens September 15, 2006 and is rated R. Comedy, Romance. Written and directed by Debbie Isitt. Starring Felicity Montagu, Jessica Hynes, Jimmy Carr, Martin Freeman, Stephen Mangan.
