By: Jessica Goddard

Unfortunately, just calling itself Another Kind of Wedding isn’t enough;  this film isn’t any different from all the other wedding comedies out there.  After all, no one makes a movie about a perfect wedding where everything goes right and everybody gets along.

For starters, it takes half the runtime to definitively figure out what the relationships are.  Barbara (Kathleen Turner) and Tammy (Frances Fisher) are separated, while Barbara retains the family home in Toronto.  Their grown kids are Carrie (Jessica Paré), Matthew (Jacob Tierney), and Kurt (Kevin Zegers).  Matthew (Tierney) is set to marry Louisa (Jessica Parker Kennedy) in Montreal – where most of the film takes place – but we soon learn that Kurt (Zegers) also used to date Louisa, which is how Louisa and Matthew met in the first place.  Unsurprisingly, there’s tension there.

So you have the main (uncomfortable) love triangle between the brothers and Louisa, a couple other confusing love triangles with side characters, and the groom’s estranged parents at one another’s throats.  And who could forget the overly-quirky peripheral characters who seem to exist just to make this yet another zany wedding comedy?

Kathleen Turner basically carries the film, as the rest of the cast lacks the charisma to make the writing believable or interesting.  Turner is responsible for most of the comedic delivery but, leaving her performance aside, there’s not a lot that’s humourous here.  Not to mention, these characters don’t exactly give you much to root for.  They go beyond relatably flawed to straight-up unlikable, and by the end you’re not even sure you want any of these people to achieve what they want.

Not that it matters, because we don’t get to know what happens – the film cuts itself off when it’s getting interesting and it looks like the characters are about to demonstrate some level of growth.  Instead, the story just feels incomplete and the movie incoherent.  It leaves fairly pressing questions unanswered and disregards any sense of investment we may have in the characters.

The Montreal scenery is sweet, and there are some lovely shots that fans of the city will get a kick out of.  Indeed, the winter-in-Canada setting is certainly an interesting choice.  But, this wedding dramedy is full of things you’ve already seen before, except you’ve probably seen them done better and funnier elsewhere.

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Jessica Goddard: @TheJGod