Wedding Daze – Starring Jason Biggs - Review
A Review of Wedding Daze Another Nail in Jason Biggs’ Comedic Coffin
Wedding Daze – Starring Jason Biggs and Isla Fisher
A Review of Wedding Daze, Another Nail in Jason Biggs’ Comedic Coffin
Jason Biggs struggled to follow on from the inordinate success of cult American teen comedy American Pie, first with Loser, a variation on a teen-com theme but much less successful, and then a run of increasingly contrived sequels. Will Wedding Daze break the losing streak?
Unfortunately for Biggs, the answer is a resounding no. The film is a veritable joke graveyard, laced with ill-conceived situational comedy, ineffective tension and what can only be described as childish and arbitrary rudeness, epitomised by the sexualised parents of Anderson (Biggs) and their inappropriate, but in no way funny, behaviour.
The entirely bizarre opening scene sets the mood for the rest of the film. Anderson’s girlfriend Vanessa falls for a waiter in one clichéd sentence, before dying of surprise at her boyfriend’s painfully embarrassing marriage proposal, for which he wears a particularly revealing cupid costume. The whole thing is completely unexplained, rushed, and awfully performed and all of this before the opening credits.
Things do not improve from here. None of the characters convince as people and are subject to caricatural mood shifts due to a fundamental dichotomy in the feel of the film, which sits uncomfortably on the fence between two genres. The discomfort and brash crudeness are reminiscent of the guttural spoof style of Will Ferrel, whereas the autumnal north-eastern American scenery and twee, folky soundtrack refer directly to the style of Zach Braff, who’s real life friend Michael Weston was even cast as Biggs’ on-screen friend Ted.
The result is exceedingly difficult to enjoy as it is never clear what you are watching. One minute the mood is low and reflective with a photographic, existential cinematographic style and the next the hero is hit by a car and a Tom Green wannabe is screaming and shouting at him. This jarring indecision in the mood of the film leaves Biggs unable to settle into his role. The characters around him struggle to find the balance between substance and comic relief and pull him violently between the two poles.
Many members of the cast, and in fact the film’s writer/director Michael Ian Black, are more commonly seen on the small screen and this is detrimentally apparent in many of the performances, none more so than that of Katie’s ex-boyfriend, who appears to have been recruited in the wings of a local pantomime and not yet broken character.
The worst thing is that Biggs’ performance is not actually that bad. He is confident and assured despite the crippling shortcomings of both the direction and the writing and you get the feeling that in a different film he could be very successful.
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