The Wedding Planner (2001) Was Poorly Planned

[00:00:00]My parents were incredibly strict about what movies we were allowed to watch growing up. And by my parents, I mostly mean my mom. This pretty much all came from her. But because there were so many kids in our family, movies would get sort of slotted into certain years depending on when the older siblings had seen it. And with every birthday, you would graduate into this new group of movies that you were now considered old enough to see. For some reason, we watched a lot of classics, by which I mean filmed pre-970s classics, not like uh Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones 80s and 90s classics. I didn't start watching those until I left home. But classics were mostly considered safe to consume at an earlier age or even for the whole family, especially the comedies and the musicals. And that was all well and good. Some of my favorite movies are still those classics, but I always had my eye on this whole long list of movies dangling in my future like a delicious carrot on a string.

[00:01:00]Romcoms and chickflicks. I don't love the term chickflick, but it is what we used at the time. We had two very specific categories of movies here. Even though the general premise of all of these movies was female lead falls in love, chickflick featured a female lead who was in high school or in college and the end goal was a kiss shared with the boy of her dreams or the boy who had been there the whole time and she didn't realize he was the boy of her dreams.

[00:01:30]Princess Diaries Cinderella story what a girl wants. Romcoms featured a grown woman in the leading role and the end goal was a wedding. whether implied or explicitly shown. Sleepless in Seattle, Kate and Leupold, You've Got Mail. Were those all Meg Ryan? You generally grew into chickflicks before becoming of age to see romcoms, but even chickflicks were not just a given. I so vividly remember when Princess Diaries came out and I was not allowed to go see it in theaters. How old was I? The Princess Diaries, 2001. Huh. Taking place in San Francisco.

[00:02:11]That'll be an interesting coincidence in a minute. So, I would have been nine. My three older sisters went to see that movie like a dozen times in theaters, and I was so jealous. These were the days when you could watch a movie in theater for a dollar. That feels so parallel to someone saying, "Back in my day, you could get a hamburger for a nickel." But seriously, that probably feels wild to anyone born after the year 2000. But yeah, there was a theater in our town that we literally just called the dollar theater cuz you could go watch a movie for a dollar. They usually wouldn't get the new movies until like a few weeks later than the regular theaters which cost like I think $7 or maybe up to 10 on the weekends, but you just waited a few weeks and then you could go watch a movie in theater for a whopping dollar. Anyway, my mom let me see Princess Diaries like a year later, and I was so mad when I found out the only thing she thought was inappropriate for my 9-year-old eyes was Mia getting bullied on the beach. I had assumed there was a full-on explicit nude sex scene or something. [sighs and gasps] Anyway, my point here is that romcoms were a huge part of my teenage years.

[00:03:26]Namely, because movies in general were a big thing in our house since we didn't watch much TV. Every time I aged into a new romcom allowance, it was a glorious day. It was not just something new to watch. It was also me taking a tiny step closer to my three older sisters and the world they got to inhabit. And then I became an adult and moved out and started watching all the TV shows that we weren't allowed to watch growing up.

[00:03:50]And I did not revisit these romcoms for a very long time until recently. It is time for romcom rewatch. I do not like this framing. That is for some reason way better in my opinion. Seriously, if you enjoy this video and you want me to do more, there is a whole long list of romcoms that I would be happy to revisit and yap about. I had a lot of fun putting this script together. Today though, I want to talk about the 2001 masterpiece, The Wedding Planner. I've watched several 90s and 2000s romcoms lately that had me loudly protesting plot contrivances to my empty living room.

[00:04:28]But The Wedding Planner was immediately top of my list to talk about because the premise itself or like I guess you would say like the background information already feels so off. The script feels like it was written a long time before the movie actually got made, which does happen quite a lot. scripts get optioned or bought by a studio and then they just sit on it and don't do anything until one day they're like, "Oh yeah, this old thing. I guess we could whip that out."

[00:04:55]I actually read the script for Books Smart once, that Beanie Feldstein movie.

[00:05:00]Quite good actually. I recommend only it wasn't really that movie because it was the original script and it had been written like a decade or more before the movie actually got made. So technology had changed, culture had changed, politics had changed, and they rewrote a massive amount of that script while keeping like the original plotline. So there are fundamental elements of The Wedding Planner that feel really out ofd for 2001. Although in all fairness, I might just be misremembering 2001. I was only nine, after all. I did a bit of soouththing and found an original script for the wedding planner that sold on eBay and it was dated 1996. So that is a bit before, but I get kind of more like8s vibes from the story line.

[00:05:49]Namely, our leading lady Mary Fior is a second generation daughter of Italian immigrants. So maybe that feels 80s to me because that's when the Golden Girls started and that also had that whole Italian immigrant parent plotline. But like they cast Jennifer Lopez, a woman of Puerto Rican descent, to play the daughter of immigrants in America and then made her Italian. This is not to say that JLo can't play Italian.

[00:06:22]That's like a whole other discussion.

[00:06:25]But why not, if you want to cast Jennifer Lopez, update the script and make her the daughter of immigrants from Latin America? it wouldn't really affect any of the major plot points of the storyline. So why not? H why not? That is a rhetorical question. We know why not.

[00:06:45]But the really strange thing to me is that a sort of random but necessaryish part of the plot revolves around her parents having had an arranged marriage.

[00:06:56]Mhm. Do I have any Italians watching?

[00:07:01]Were arranged marriages a thing in Italy? Let's assume that Mary's parents got married like 30 to 35 years before the events of this movie, which is happening in present day 2001. Were Italians doing arranged marriages in the 1960s and '7s? I mean, maybe they were, but there's a lot of countries and cultures where arranged marriage was and still is a thing and is a more well-known thing. So, if you wanted to write a script where arranged marriage and immigration are like a necessary part of the plotline, why not make the characters from a country where that's a more common thing in their culture? Again, rhetorical. We know why Italians are sexy. Though notably, only one of their three main Italians was actually Italian.

[00:07:58][laughter] Okay, let's actually get into the movie, though. We open on a scene of our protagonist as a child.

[00:08:05][sighs] I wouldn't mind this so much if it wasn't such a massively overdone trope in romcoms. Y'all, she loves weddings. I wonder if that childhood obsession will possibly turn into a career as an adult.

[00:08:18]Oh, look. She became a wedding planner.

[00:08:20]Who could have seen that coming? Right away, we've got a fascinating lore drop.

[00:08:24]Mary tells this bride that she did Whitney Houston's wedding.

[00:08:29]Ooh, Whitney Houston got married in 1992.

[00:08:34]So, that means Mary has been pretty high up in the wedding planning business. is high enough to be doing a celebrity wedding for 9 years now. She's successful or she's lying. But really, I think this was a fun little Easter egg for the director, Adam Shankman. He started out as a choreographer and his first job, according to IMDb, was a Whitney Houston music video. The wedding planner was actually like his first directing credit, but he went on to direct and produce a bunch of stuff. A lot of it in the musical theater or dance vein. Hairspray, Rock of Ages, the entire Stepup franchise, Glee. He didn't really revisit romcoms, though. After Mary calms a panicking bride with, we are told for some reason, incredible thighs, we get this wer that shows us both how complex a big wedding is and how capable Mary is. Y'all, we got to recognize this shot. This is show don't tell exposition, and I love it. A wer is a long continuous shot with no cuts, or at least none that you can see. meaning it has to be filmed all in one go with no mistakes. This shot in the wedding planner is 2 minutes and 36 seconds long. That is insane. It maybe doesn't sound that insane, but keep in mind that most shots in a movie don't even last a full second. We also cover multiple rooms and even more than one floor of this building. We have literally hundreds of extras involved. We have lines of dialogue that need to happen at very specific places. We have this moment where Penny is lined up in the background removing a guest with tall hair while Mary looks at the feed.

[00:10:25]Gorgeous. It's unsurprising to me that the director had a background in dance and choreography. I swear there's a connection between the two. Wers like this with extreme camera movement have to be choreographed to perfection. And honestly, there was no real reason to go that hard on a random romcom, but Adam Shankman did for his first movie. And good for him. We see that Mary has got a full kit inside her spiffy periwinkle blazer. I love the single clothes pin here. And also that the only thing that's labeled is sedatives. She must lead such a romantic life, says a guest.

[00:11:05]If there's one thing I've learned from years of watching YouTube content, it's that you can't play even the slightest bit of a movie clip without getting a copyright strike. So, I will be doing dramatic line readings for you. Cut to Mary at home being extremely precise and just as capable as she was at work and so alone. I think this is supposed to make us feel sad for her, but uh she's got a stunning apartment, a great career, and endless episodes of Antique Road Show to watch. The girls live in a dream. I do feel like this is something we see less in movies nowadays, though, this style of show don't tell exposition, because you actually have to be looking at the screen to get it. But we've gotten Mary as a child, Mary at work, and Mary at home. So, by eight minutes into this movie, we are cutting to Mary with her parent, and we've already been provided with a pretty well-rounded look at who our main character is without having to have some random chunk of dialogue where someone's like, "Oh, Mary, you're so precise, it's almost OCD, but you're so alone. You need a man." I'm discovering on this rewatch that it might be the direction the directing of movies like this that kind of make up for uh the massive plot problems. Mary plays Scrabble with her dad at what appears to be a senior center. And this gives us an opportunity to see Mary being cute and funny and witty and sarcastic. And honestly, I really enjoy Jennifer Lopez's acting in this movie as a whole, but especially in this scene. She's quite fun. There's a lot of like physical and facial comedy and I think she does it really well.

[00:12:47]Surprise though, Daddy Dearest has found a man for his daughter, Masimo. Fresh off the boat from Italy. Gh, the kid who ate mud. According to romcom tropes, that means he should have grown up to either be a minor or a ceramicist. Enter Justin Chambers, who is very much not Italian, as we can tell by his attempt at a broken English Italian accent. This entire movie, he just kind of sounds like he's talking with his mouth full.

[00:13:18]He is pretty adorable, though. Adorable is how everyone describes him in this movie. And I love when Mary's dad pets his face like this. By the way, Justin Chambers went on to act in Grey's Anatomy for a while, which I've never personally watched, although I was in it a few times. And I definitely always thought when I saw photos of him from Grey's Anatomy that he was the guy who played Roy, Pam's boyfriend, in The Office. Turns out David Denman was in Grey's Anatomy, but just for like one episode as a guest star. And nope, this was Justin Chambers all along. Masimo.

[00:13:52]Oh, that mud did him good. Every romcom needs a sassy senior who says whatever she wants. So Mary's dad ran into childhood mud eater Masimo who apparently agreed on the spot to marry Mary or Maria as her dad calls her.

[00:14:09]Masimo proceeds to goodnaturedly insult Mary. I don't think we had the term neg back then. And Mary's like, "Okay, I'm out. Bye." I love that her father is for some reason shocked by this development.

[00:14:21]He wants three sons in a garden of tomatoes. Tomatoes? What more could you ask for? Yahoo product placement. So, of the time, did Yahoo seriously have a physical magazine at one point? Mary's at work and her boss is Kathy Najimi.

[00:14:36]She's got a blender in her office. We get a much shorter wonderer moving down the hallway that kind of mirrors that original one with Mary, but is now showing her boss's capabilities. Once again, Penny is framed beautifully in the middle. And again, can we please have more show don't tell Warner exposition character establishment?

[00:14:55]They're so good. Mary is telling her seemingly distracted boss that she's got a new money rising socialite who's interested in hiring them to do her wedding and she's going to come to the Copeland wedding to check out their work. Can the wedding planner just invite other clients to your wedding?

[00:15:14]That feels weird. It'll be our biggest event ever. Girl, you just 8 minutes ago said that you did Whitney Houston's wedding. I've been here 5 years, Jerry.

[00:15:24]Okay, it's sounding like the Whitney wedding was a lie. Now we get to the rub as people said once upon a time. Mary wants to be made partner. She brings in more revenue than all the other wedding planners combined. Times five. Goodness.

[00:15:39]Kathy is making such delightful faces all the way through this scene. The presence of Kathy Najimi makes any movie better. Mary threatens to leave and form her own company and it is implied that her boss agrees. Nail the Donnelly account. this rising socialite and you will be made partner. We finally get more of Judy Greer as Penny criminally stuck playing the quirky best friend in romcoms. Although in all fairness, when I wanted to be an actress, that's the role that I wanted to play. I didn't want to be a leading lady. I wanted to be the character actor comedic relief.

[00:16:12]Those roles look like so much more fun.

[00:16:14]We get a good bit of info dropping very fast here. One, the wedding planners bet on how long the marriages are going to last. Two, Mary is extremely good at winning these bets. Three, she bases her bets on stuff like what color the bridesmaid's dresses were and what song they dance to. Four, Mary hasn't had a date in 2 years. Romcom classic, hiding behind a clothing rack to avoid someone.

[00:16:36]It never works, ladies. Actually lies.

[00:16:38]It does work this time. We're at the Copeland wedding and look at this wedding guest diversity. Honestly, pretty ahead of its time. Enter Fran Donnelly, who is such a delight. I really enjoy the way they wrote her character. Side note, the costume designer definitely had a very specific color scheme for Jennifer Lopez. Largely periwinkle, lavender, soft purples, and she was sticking to it. Fran does at least tell her parents here, "We're not guests. You're not supposed to be drinking the champagne." So, I guess that's a little more appropriate to invite a client to somebody else's wedding, but like they're not actually going to partake. Although, her parents are very happily partaking. Anyway, seriously though, what is the theme of this wedding? Everyone is sitting on like low benches with pillows on them.

[00:17:26]And then Penny says the belly dancer is here. Exciting stuff. Mary tries to impress the Donnies by outlining what she sees for Fran's wedding. And look at Fran's listening face. She is enraptured. Exotic orange trees imported from Bali. I'm sorry, what? Also, Mary says that she sees the wedding happening in the Dose Botanical Gardens, uh, which do not exist, which is maybe why the wedding does not happen there. Y'all, it's finally time for the true inciting incident and the arrival of our love interest. Mary is walking somewhere telling Jerry on the phone how she nailed it with the Donny's when all of a sudden her heel gets stuck in a manhole cover. These are my best Gucci shoes. Side note, she never actually ends the phone conversation with Jerry.

[00:18:18]Was Jerry just on the line this whole time listening to this entire thing happen? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, or rather slightly up the road, a random taxi driver drops the ice cream he's eating while driving. Okay, someone take away his license and manages to run into a dumpster, which begins to hurdle down the street right towards, oh no, Mary.

[00:18:43]Mary has taken her foot out of the shoe like a sane person, clocks this dumpster, h hurtling towards her, and for some reason cannot fathom the idea that if she took three steps back, the dumpster would whiz right on by and probably not even touch the shoe cuz it is raised off of the ground on wheels.

[00:19:05]And then she could take three steps forward again and take her time removing the shoe from the manhole cover. Heck no. She is not taking her hands off of this very expensive footwear. What is life when you have shoes? Good thing there's a man around to knock her to the ground. You saved my shoe. I absolutely love how they put Matthew McConnA in the background of this entire scene, walking to his car, taking off his jacket, watching this whole debacle unfold, but he's just far enough away and blurry enough that on first watch, you don't really notice him. But then on second watch, it's like, "Oh no, he was there the whole time." But y'all, despite the delightful framing and oh so quotable lines, I have so much beef with this scene. He freaking body slams her into the concrete and then they're just laying there like this. Like first of all, they are open mouth huffing into each other's faces, which just from the actor's standpoints has got to be uh unpleasant.

[00:20:10]And then she's like, "Yo, you're laying on top of me and I can't breathe." And he's just over there petting her head and giggling and not getting off of her.

[00:20:21]Dude, get off of her. Also, he says that she has no signs of a concussion without doing diddly squat to actually check for signs of a concussion.

[00:20:30]Okay, you took quite a fall again, sir, you body slammed her. She literally goes, "Why are you still on me?" And he's like, he that's a good question.

[00:20:42]You see that dumpster over there? Well, it tried to kill you. I think it's supposed to be all cute and charming, but honestly, the way he does these lines just comes off as like creepy and condescending. He finally stands her up and I'm like, considering you slammed her back first onto the concrete road and also considering you're a doctor, we're about to find out he's a doctor, shouldn't you maybe like check for neck or spinal injuries first?

[00:21:13]I mean, they do have him very conveniently cradling her head with his hand so that her head itself wouldn't have slammed into the concrete. And they like make a point to point this out [laughter] because otherwise, yeah, I'm pretty sure she would have cracked her skull on the sidewalk. Then we get the line that I think was the most quoted of this movie, at least among my sisters. You smell like sweet red plums and grilled cheese sandwiches. and Mary faints. She wakes up in the hospital surrounded by children. Y'all, medical stuff in actual medical TV shows is already usually pretty inaccurate. Medical stuff in TV shows and movies where that's just a little plot point and isn't the whole thing is often straight up nonsense.

[00:22:04]Turns out our hero boy is a pediatrician. The cutest form of doctor.

[00:22:09]Imagine if he was like a podiatrist or something. It's just not as cute. We need to see him interacting with children so that we can immediately like him. It's shorthand. Mary was apparently unconscious long enough for him to drive her to the hospital, admit her to the children's ward, and administer numerous tests, including X-rays and a CAT scan, and then stick her in a children's bed.

[00:22:38]Yeah, I'd be making this face, too. Why are all these kids just running around the hospital looking absolutely perfectly fine and having no adult supervision? Why was she admitted to the children's ward? I don't think that's how hospitals work. We do at least get this delightfully sassy line. If you're moving your arms and legs, you're clearly not paralyzed. That kid nailed it. Best performance of the whole movie.

[00:23:03]Dr. Steve Edison tells Mary that she has a big neck, which is a fun call back to when Masimo told her that she had a big head as a child. Got to throw in random comments about a woman's body for her to hilariously obsess over. Cut instantly to a scene of Mary freaking out cuz she thinks she looks like trash. She fixes this by smoothing down her hair and putting on lip gloss. Thank god she fixed it, y'all. Look at the vast difference. Oh my god, she looked so bad before. It is a fun little silly moment for Jennifer Lopez to be fun and silly, though. Mary's cat scan came back clear, so she's good to go, which is a good thing because she's already up and dressed and going. Penny shows up being panicked and silly and delightful. But I have to point out this random line. The nurse found my number taped to your Palm Pilot. What I think the point here is to show that Mary and Penny aren't really friends like hang out outside of work level of friends because you know famously Mary is so lonely she only hangs out with her dad at the senior center. But like why would you have a co-worker's phone number taped to your Palm Pilot? We already had a scene of Mary talking on a cell phone. So, we know that cell phones exist in this time frame. We know that Mary has one. We know it has numbers in it. Also, 5 seconds later, Penny says that she and Mary were going to go see a movie tonight. So, they do hang out. Or did she make this up? Anyway, so then we have a good old friend finagles a stranger and going on a little group outing and then has to leave at the last minute. So, it turns into kind of a date. Classic. I'd like to point out that Mary has not changed. This is the dress she was wearing at the Copeland wedding layered with this very uncomfortable looking jacket for the rescue, hospital entry, and exit. And now she's still wearing it. It has been a busy day for Mary. I mean, no one else has changed either, but after a brief hospital visit, I would have gone home and changed, especially since you're now wearing your precious Gucci heels to the park. Girl, go put on sneakers. We get a bit of banter which turns into a lore drop for our main character. Parents Italian immigrants, mother dead, father obsessed with Scrabble. To which dear old Steve replies C O L. I'm not kidding. He spells out the word cool after she tells him that her mom died.

[00:25:31]Mhm. We're supposed to like this man.

[00:25:33]And then we get the famed M&M scene.

[00:25:37]Steve is eating what looks to be peanut M&M's. You'll notice this is never confirmed. The word M&M is never said.

[00:25:46]You can't even see a logo on the package he takes them out of. This is not product placement. And gee, I wonder why Eminem didn't want to align themselves with Steve's statement. I only eat the brown ones cuz I figure they have less artificial coloring since chocolate is already brown. Okay, so people love to point out that all M&M's have artificial food coloring on them because they're coated in white first, but that is not my issue with this scene, y'all. They are at a park sitting in a tree on grass in a public space and this dingbat is throwing chocolate on the ground. That is littering. And what's more, it's kind of dangerous littering. Like, it's one thing to toss an apple core into the bushes. It's all natural. If an animal eats that, then it's just a good snack for them. But people probably walk their dogs in this park and you just dumped chocolate on the ground. Someone is going to be walking their doggy through there the next morning and the dog is going to be like, "M, little bit of a snack here and before you know it, Dr. Steve has killed a dog." Tisk, don't throw chocolate on the ground. Also, we only ever talk about chocolate with dogs. Can cats have chocolate?

[00:27:03]Squirrels? I am having way too many thoughts on this rewatch. This video is going to be so long. [laughter] Stephen Mary.

[00:27:12]I'm pretty sure there's another romcom where the leads are named Stephen and Mary. So many thoughts. Steve and Mary watch Two Tickets to Broadway, a movie that I probably saw when I was six cuz it's a 1951 musical and those were our jam. Mary asks Steve if he would like to dance. And y'all, I had a whole rant about how this feels so out of nowhere and they really should have done a wide shot establishing that other people were dancing before Mary has this line so it doesn't feel so weird. Um, only they did. I just wasn't paying attention. But also, are we surprised that there's dancing in this movie? No. Adam Shankman Steve drops lore, which is great. We know so little about him. He took ballroom lessons as a kid. Oh, you're gay. Steve is not gay.

[00:27:57]shame. There's more banter. There's a longing look in Mary's eyes. There's a cardboard stiffness to Steve's demeanor.

[00:28:05]Hm, I wonder what that's about. And then they almost kiss. Or rather, Steve stands very still while Mary almost kisses him and then looks really relieved when it starts to rain. Grow up, Steve. Stop letting the rain make your decisions for you. That's the end of that night, though. Onto another wedding. Poor Penny is ducking for cover as Crockery is smashed upon the walls and oh look, Fran is here again. Does she just get to show up to every wedding now? Mary and Fran are vibing though.

[00:28:34]They're basically besties now. And Mary tells Fran all about this new man in her life who she went on one not a date with. Fran is so kind and supportive. We love Fran in this movie. Y'all, Mary is wearing red now. [gasps] Was purple specifically her lonely girl color? Oh, and did I mention that this movie will have dancing? Adam said, "Dance," and they did. Mary appears to have brought some other random couple for a pre-wedding dance class. Don't worry about them. Mary certainly isn't.

[00:29:03]But look who happens to be there, even though their class was originally supposed to be on Thursday. It's Fran and the fiance who we haven't met yet.

[00:29:13]Oh, Eddie, come meet our wedding planner. Yeah, it's Steve. No one could have seen that coming. I freaking love the way that movies like this are scored. I don't know if I can play it for you, but the music perfectly highlights Jennifer Lopez's facial expressions in a way that is just delightful. Oh no, Fran got a phone call and no service. And the class is starting. Whatever shall we do? Eddie, dance with Mary. You must. We need the tango of anger. The tang, you could call it. They're both in red. It's going to be spicy. Winning quotes from this scene. What I'm thinking involves a machete and a pair of pliers. Why is Steve referring to himself in the third person? JLo nails this tango and looks fabulous and that dress is incredible. I want to know what fabric it's made out of. So, we're in it now. We're fully in the plot. Mary bemons her plight to Penny. Steve bemons his plight to some random doctor friend that we're not supposed to care about cuz we're never going to see him again. Both of them say, "Get a grip and grow up." And poor Fran floats by on the outskirts of this drama, blissfully unaware. Let's go spend the weekend at a vineyard. Mary is so bitter on this car ride, but honey, you had one not even a real date with this dude, and he's kind of not seeming like a great dude. Is he really worth this much of your mental and emotional space? Also, Mary is back to wearing periwinkle, but so is Steve. And I straight up hate Matthew McConna in this shirt. I don't know why. It's just bad on him. It's bad. And oh no, Masimo is there. What the This is one of those purposeful miscommunication plot lines that irks me. Masimo crashes their business meeting. This is business for Mary because Daddy Dearest told him where to find her. Okay, not appropriate. And he says that he's Mary's fiance. Y'all, they have not spoken yet. Masimo and Mary have not even had the slightest bit of a conversation. Steve is straight up gleeful because now he's not the only previously engaged who took part in their rainy almost kiss. And it's made out like Mary just can't get a word in edgewise to say, "No, no, this is some random dude my dad shoved on me.

[00:31:36]We are not engaged." But like she had plenty of diamond space. There's not even really that feeling of like, oh, I don't want to like hurt his feelings or humiliate this poor guy in front of everyone else because again, they have not interacted yet. She has no reason to preserve his pride. It's very um we just needed this to happen for the plot. Although that does mean that we get these very silly scenes of the boys doing manly bonding by running on treadmills and doing chin-ups and straight up wrestling on the lawn of a vineyard. Fair enough. I'll take it.

[00:32:13]Fran's dad immediately nixed the vineyard by the way. But I guess they're staying the whole weekend anyway. Or I guess this is the same weekend. I don't know. It's not clear. But all of a sudden everyone has changed clothes and we're going horseback riding including Masumo. He's a part of this now. What does this have to do with choosing a wedding venue?

[00:32:35]Nothing. But we need Steve to rescue Mary again. They're only attracted to each other when she's been freshly rescued. Why are mothers in romcoms always either dead or drunk? Who knows?

[00:32:46]But I'll take it cuz Joanna Gleason is hilarious. Once again, Mary is given plenty of time post-traumatic rescue to say, "Uh, Masimo is not my fianceé. He is just some random guy my dad is shoving on me." And once again, she says nothing of the sort. I suppose at this point, you could argue that maybe she's too embarrassed to admit that it's not legit if this has already been going on for like 24 hours. But like, I'm still not buying it. Instead of clearing things up, she chooses to harpoon Fran's wedding choices. Remember, they use these choices to bet how long a marriage will last. And we get the fabulous line, teal, the color of gang green. Steve basically calls Mary out here. He calls her bitter and cynical. And um I'm not a huge fan of Steve in this movie, as I think is very evident, but he's technically not wrong here. And then we get Masimo on his Vespa. Delightful.

[00:33:42]Mary is sleeping in her clothes on top of the bed, hugging what looks like a body bag. Is there a deleted scene that explains this? And her dad starts measuring her for a wedding dress.

[00:33:56]creepy. Go home. Leave your daughter alone. But here we finally get the info drop that apparently his grown daughter has never before heard. Your mother and I had an arranged marriage. I got to do it like him. Your mother and I had an arranged marriage. That's bad. He has a really interesting cadence to his voice, though. There is never any explanation given as to why her mom and dad had an arranged marriage in Italy in the 1960s or even why Mary's dad feels like he needs to arrange a marriage for Mary other than like I just want you to be happy. Famously, you cannot be happy without a mate. And Mary's dad says, give Masimo a chance. You might not like him now, but you might love him later.

[00:34:50][sighs] Yes, that's a great thing to base a marriage on.

[00:34:55]Might love him later. We're being given all these brief glances into why maybe Fran and Steve are not right for each other. And I think it's supposed to come across as like Fran's kind of manipulating Steve. She's making all these decisions for him. She's telling him where his life is going to go, but also Steve is the most wishy-washy man ever and literally cannot make a single decision for himself. And honestly, I really appreciate the way that they write Fran because a lot of times when there's a side character who's with one of the main love interests and needs to eventually be kicked out of the picture, they're kind of like cartoon villainized cuz you know, we the audience need to hate them so that we'll root for the lead character. But they don't do that with Fran. She is portrayed as a smart, independent, strong woman, a great business person. She's kind and supportive to Mary. Like I'm happy when she and Steve eventually end, but it's because she deserved so much better than his wishy-washy ass. Fran gets the happy ending in this movie. Anyway, back to the present story line. And oh no, Fran has to leave town for a week because of big boss businesswoman stuff. Steve and Mary are going to have to do a week of wedding planning by themselves together.

[00:36:13]So, even though we were slowly given access to more and more romcoms as we aged in my household, there was almost always in almost every single one a scene that my mom did not approve of and would require us to either mute or fastforward through. Let's hope there's no plot important dialogue in that scene cuz you're not seeing it until you rewatch the movie much much later. Mary and Steve go to a statue farm. And this is that scene. Steve knocks a marble, sorry, no, limestone statue over like it's made of cardboard. Wow, he's so strong. They struggle to write the statue before a guard sees, even though the guard is looking right at them the whole time. But oh no, you castrated him. Y'all, the shenanigans. Mary attempts to crazy glue the pecker, I'm using the words they use, back onto the statue. And given the fact that they say the name crazy glue twice, product placement. But uh-oh, Steve stuck. That crazy glue, it's just so good. This guard has had enough of shenanigans. Now Mary gets to save Steve, though.

[00:37:27]Removing a supposedly granite penis from a man's hand is definitely on par with rescuing someone off a runaway horse.

[00:37:33]They apologize. They bond. And finally, Mary says, "I'm not engaged to Masimo."

[00:37:41]Or more specifically, she says, "We're not engaged anymore." Girl, you have so much time sitting there with this man. Give him the full story. Give him the details. Why would you not? I'm assuming they had to pay for that statue, too, cuz Mary keeps the stone pecker. Mary goes to her dad's house and Masimo is there looking adorable in his cardigan and armchair combo. He wants for them to be uh buddy buddy. He wants to cook boxed mac and cheese for her.

[00:38:15]This choice right here, Justin, I applaud you for it. They eat, they talk, he remembers her mother, points for him.

[00:38:24]He says, "Love can't always be perfect.

[00:38:26]Love is just love." Which is apparently something that her mother used to say.

[00:38:32]In what context? Mandatory market shopping scene where somebody runs into their ex. Why is it always at a market like this? A farmers market, a flower market. It's just more poetic to run into an ex who's doing well at an outdoor market cuz only people who are doing well shop at outdoor markets. We at last get the ultimate Mary lore drop, which has only been very slightly alluded to up until this point. Mary was previously engaged. Not just engaged, almost made it to the wedding, kind of engaged. Like found my fianceé cheating on me with his best friend the night of our rehearsal dinner kind of engaged.

[00:39:16]And she kept being a wedding planner anyway. So, hey, maybe she's allowed to be a little cynical sometimes, you know?

[00:39:23]So, it's night and Mary is drunk and Steve is still with her begging the question, "What have they been doing for the last several hours? Did he just sit there and watch her drink herself into oblivion while not talking about what just happened at the flower market at all?" I do love this scene, though. She wanders away and plops down in the street and then says, "Jeze was the only queen in the Bible to be eaten by dogs."

[00:39:48]This feels so improv. There's no way that that was in the script. We now get the dramatic scenes. Mary sobers up a bit and calls her ex- fiance a jerk. And we're supposed to agree with her, but we also have the knowledge that Steve is going to end up doing the same thing to Fran, right? Like, we know that's how the movie has to end. It's a romcom, not a rom. You can't let a man sit in your apartment looking at you like that by candle light and not expect him to dump his fiance. And indeed, here we finally get Steve's love confession. He leaves and then comes back to tell her this and she says, "I'm a magnet for unavailable men and I'm sick of it." Okay, it's not like this has happened five billion times, Mary dearest. It's happened twice, six years apart from each other in very different ways. But good on Mary for shutting this down. We get the good old crossedwire scene where Mary thinks that Fran knows what happened, but Fran actually just is thinking about getting out of the wedding for her own reasons.

[00:40:55]Side note, Mary has a rack of ribbon in her office. And then Mary gives her the speech, the same speech she gave the panicking bride with good thighs at the beginning of the movie. Full circle moment. It doesn't hit quite as well this time. Maybe because we know now that it is a rehearsed speech full of lies. Although I do appreciate that they wrote in this line for Steve at the flower market where he says of Fran, "She picked me." Like literally those words. So that then in Mary's little speech, she says, "Steve said, "I can't believe she picked me." And it's like, "Oh, well, he kind of said something sort of similar to that, only um not really that at all." I thought it was clever writing. Okay, we got to start wrapping this up. This is so long.

[00:41:44]Masimo makes a toast, gets another face pet from Daddy Dearest, and gives Mary a dollhouse, even though it's Bert's birthday. Girl, this is not about you.

[00:41:55]So much for Buddy Buddy, though. There's a ring in the dollhouse, and Mosimo officially proposes for real. Be my wife. Mary looks at this photo of her mom waffles for a very long time and then spells out okay on a scrabble board.

[00:42:17]Yay, I guess. Look, I'm not a huge fan of Steve. Masimo is much more adorable and nowadays a lot of people are like, "Ah, she should have stuck with Masimo."

[00:42:26]But like, I don't like either choice for her. Stay single, you won't die montage.

[00:42:33]This is actually the first montage of the movie. I think montages are more a thing in the like chickflick side of romcoms. Partnership is happening all around. It's wedding day for both Fran and Mary. That's right. Mary is abandoning the Donnelly wedding, turning the whole thing over to Penny, who totally has this under control. She She's fine. This is This is totally fine. Why? cuz Mary's got somewhere else to be. The courthouse for her own wedding for some reason at the exact same time. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Steve pulls Fran for a chat. Sure. This was filmed in Huntington Gardens. Y'all, so much stuff is filmed in the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. And my new favorite pastime is pointing it out every single time. Matt loves it. They definitely tried to write this in a way where it becomes Fran's decision to call off the wedding. Basically, so that Steve isn't really leaving Fran at the altar and he comes off as less of a dick. But like, if my fiance pulled me aside 2 minutes before we were supposed to walk down the aisle and was like, "Look, I'll totally totally still marry you. Um, can you just like tell me why you want to marry me?" I'd be like, "Oh, should I have to convince you to marry me at the last moment?" So Fran decides, "No, it's totally her own choice.

[00:44:04]They're all good. They're still friends." Fran says, "I haven't thought about what I want in so long." And I'm like, "Huh?" But also, sure. Okay. She's leaving. And may she have a wonderful life. We love Fran. Penny is freaking out. Fair. That's how Steve finds out that Mary has left to go get married at city hall. And he's like, "Oh crap." And jumps in a taxi. But traffic, of course, there's always traffic. So he um normally in this situation trope-wise would get out and start running, but no, he just commandeers the taxi and uh magically gets through the traffic. Side note, his taxi driver is the same guy who almost killed Mary with a dumpster.

[00:44:51]What fun. I do feel like the only reason they had to have Mary accept Masimo's proposal or quite frankly have Masimo in this movie at all is for this bit of heightened drama here. We need Steve to freak out. We need him to think that it's too late and he missed his chance.

[00:45:11]We need it cuz surprise, he gets to city hall and there's Masimo abandoned. Mary backed out and it was her dad who made it happen. Are you serious? You orchestrated this entire mess. You shoved Masimo onto your daughter and then at the last minute you get to be like, "No, this is wrong." This actually does feel like a very sudden direction change. In this one shot, Mary's dad is looking at Masimo like he's proud. Like that is definitely a look of pride and joy on his face. He's smiling. And then we cut to the sassy senior who is looking super worried. And when we cut back to Mary's dad, he all of the sudden looks upset as though in between those two shots, the director was like, "I think it should actually be her dad who's against the wedding, the wedding that he arranged. Maybe it was originally Mary herself or someone else in the room who ends it. We don't know.

[00:46:13]Stuff does change sometimes in the middle of filming. People rewrite scripts on the spot. Also, why is the judge British? Anyway, we get this weird heart-to-heart with Mary and her dad where literally nothing logical is said, but Mary is like, "You know what? I finally accepted that love is in a fairy tale, so I'm going to marry Masimo."

[00:46:33]Like, she says she's going to go through with it. And then we cut to the steps of the palace and she gone one. So now we don't need to see her change of heart. Why would we need to see that?

[00:46:45]Masimo is taking it like a champ. He plops Steve on the back of the Vespa and takes him right to Mary. But I do love that as Steve is running off, you can hear Masimo yelling, "But I still did more chin-ups than you." Yes, you did.

[00:47:00]Hold on to that. Mary is on her oh so special tree plotting the death of dogs, aka throwing chocolate on the ground again. You'll got to stop that. So blah blah blah. No one got married and Steve wants to dance. This is one of the implied wedding endings cuz they literally know nothing about each other.

[00:47:20]They need to date for a while and quite frankly I don't have high hopes of their relationship lasting. Steve sucks. the whole like, ah, she should have chosen Masimo, he's actually better thing. No, not that either. I mean, first of all, she doesn't need a relationship at all.

[00:47:38]Let's let's not overlook that detail.

[00:47:41]But if Mary is interested in a relationship, let's not forget that she hasn't had a date in 2 years. Mary, honey, you just need to start dating again. There are a lot of men out there and um Steve versus Masimo, that's not your that's not your choice.

[00:48:01]You need to go date some more men.

[00:48:02]Anyway, so that was the wedding planner.

[00:48:04]It's weird. It's messy. It's got some strange choices. And of course, there are some bits that have aged like milk, as is typical, but I think the direction and the cinematography is really, really good. Who knew I would have so many thoughts about it?

[00:48:21]Actually, I'm not that surprised. Some final thoughts. One, I so appreciate that for the bulk of this movie, Jennifer Lopez's hair is pulled back.

[00:48:31]Thank you, logical. Get your hair out of your face. She is a busy working woman.

[00:48:36]And two, I kind of want to do a spreadsheet of romcom data that could be interesting to compare at some point.

[00:48:43]Writer, director, does it pass the Beal test? And then maybe like does it start with a childhood scene and does Judy Greer play the quirky best friend?

[00:48:53]Wedding planner director is of course Adam Shankman as I have previously mentioned and I think his skill is undeniable especially when it comes to framing, cinematography, blocking and choreography. The writers were Pamela Faulk and Michael Ellis. They did not write much else. Not a lot of credits there. I'm interested to see eventually if like some of the same names keep showing up in the writing and directing of romcoms, but so far with this group, uh, I don't think they're ever going to show up again. And yes, it does technically pass the Beal test because Mary and her boss talk about work. Woo.

[00:49:32]Anyway, I've never done rewatch content like this before, but I've been really enjoying watching rewatch content lately, and I feel like I have a lot of thoughts on movies that most people don't cover, specifically the whole romcom genre. So, if you did enjoy this, let me know. I had a lot of fun putting this together, and I could do some more.

[00:49:53]I for sure could do some more.

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