A few best men

Director: Stephan Elliott
Starring: Xavier Samuel, Kris Marshall, Kevin Bishop and Olivia Newton John
Distributor: Independent
Runtime: 97 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2012

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Rating notes: Strong crude humour and drug references

American films like The Hangover, The Wedding Crashers and Bridesmaids remind us that the public has an appetite for raucous comedies. The British were more restrained with Four Weddings and a Funeral, though Death at a Funeral was a bit more in your face (and had an American remake).

Actually, Death at a Funeral is relevant here as the writer, Dean Craig, turns his attention to a wedding and transfers the multi-mishap plot to a wedding. And the director is Stephan Elliot, famous for Priscilla (less so for Welcome to Woop Woop).

This is not a film for the fastidious. It is for those who like a yarn that is funny but not afraid to be crude as well.

Xavier Samuel has his chance to be seen in a big hit film rather than in the small-budget stories and horror films that have marked his career. He is joined by two British comedians who have a solid TV reputation, Kris Marshall (playing the crass friend) and Kevin Bishop (playing the put upon friend). David (Samuel) has fallen in love with an Australian girl, daughter of a dill of an ambitious Senator, and comes with his friends for the wedding in the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains backgrounds look beautiful.

The action takes place over twenty four hours and the plot consists of whatever could go wrong does go wrong. This involves slapstick of people knocking into each other, drinking on a stag night with video, complications with a merino sheep called Ramsey, a despondent friend who knocks a huge marriage ball off its pedestal which hurtles down onto the wedding party, a fiasco of speeches. Drugs come into it with a dealer (a humorous performance by Steve Le Marquand as a druggie with a heart of mush – and a gun). And, the mother of the bride gets high and berserk. The shock is that she is played by Olivia Newton John as exactly the opposite of what we expect her to be like. There are also political complications, police complications and the marriage being declared a failure before it has begun.

But, all will be well.

Better than expected, it kind of grows on you… But there are several reviewers who want to assure us that it doesn’t!