Comedy, 97 Minutes, 2011
English boy meets Australian girl on vacation and they fall in love. Throwing caution to the wind they decide to get married in a few short days. She flies home to plan, he flies home to collect his three best friends who will do their damnedest to ruin his life.
It’s cute in its way, but nothing you haven’t seen a couple of dozen times by now. It’s a farce and the genre is basically “what you see is what you get” at this point. Bad decisions, terrible reactions and random chaos.
The biggest problem is that everything is just so lazy. Alcohol and drugs account for most of the issues. “Hey, some people got drunk and did something stupid” may be true-to-life, but it’s not exactly clever. Dad has a prized sheep, so weird things happen to the sheep. An insane drug-dealer keeps his stash in exactly the same bag as the mousy friend and – you’ll never see this coming – they get switched by accident!
All the hits are there. Dad is strict, so we destroy his favorite things by accident. Mom is repressed, so we get her high and watch the fireworks. The lovebirds have a moment of crisis, the friends come through in the end and there’s no real harm done after all.
Surprisingly enough, unoriginal and lazy don’t necessarily mean “bad”. Some may even find it nicely comfortable. There are definitely some laughs and the love story is sincere enough to matter. It’s a fun, if simple, movie. Just set your expectations accordingly.
