Four Weddings and a Funeral
by Mike Newell
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DVD details
Actor: Hugh Grant, James Fleet, John Hannah, Kristin Scott Thomas, Simon CallowDirector: Mike Newell
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 117 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1997-06-25
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Polygram Video
DVD Reviews of Four Weddings and a Funeral
DVD Review: They Don't Get Much Better Than This
Summary: 5 Stars
"Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994) is one of my favorite movies: well-acted, a rollicking romantic comedy with one serious, touching scene, and an overall feeling of the vitality and the spirit of life. The movie creates a gang of friends, each one interesting and fun to be with. It may be Hugh Grant's best film where he's able to balance his boyish charm with a more ruminative side. The gang gathers at a series of weddings, and through wonderful vignettes we get to know each one: the hippie girl, the deaf mute, the Charles Addams Morticia-looking woman, the flamboyant, joyful gay guy and his devoted lover, and the clutzy millionaire.
At the one funeral scene in the movie, Gareth's lover, Matthew, delivers a very moving eulogy that always tears me up. He reads W.H. Auden's poem "Funeral Blues" otherwise known as "Stop All the Clocks." With the lines "He was my North, my South, my East and West/I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong." As in other British movies slapstick comedy like Monty Python can be paired with the deadly serious.
The movie begins with Hugh and his Platonic roommate hippie girl buddy late to a wedding, and at a fast pace the film travels through multiple lives and meetings. Charles (Grant) falls for Carrie (Andie MacDowell) at first sight, but he's always been unwilling to make a commitment to marriage, and has had a series of girlfriends. He's met the right girl but doesn't have the ability to effectuate. Grant can play flustered, irresponsible, self-absorbed, irritated, bedraggled, put upon, and still keep his impish, boyish charm.
The multiple weddings are fun with their eccentric characters. Grant and his friend say awkward, indiscreet, funny things in wedding speeches. One of the film's hilarious highlights is when Rowan Atkinson (of Mr. Bean fame) officiates at his first wedding as a newly ordained priest. He says "Holy goat" instead of "Holy Ghost" and "Holy spigot" instead of "Holy Spirit."
The film's dialogue is literate and funny. It's clever the way Charles and Carrie use "skulk" for example. The film has great photography.
At the final wedding suspense piles up, we in the audience get more involved and tense as the scene plays out. Stick around for the credits at the end: they're fun. And the soundtrack is fine too.
DVD Review: The film that made Hugh Grant a star
Summary: 4 Stars
Classic comedy. All the supporting case is stellar. Except Andie MacDowell. She's not believable (is she really attractive enough to follow around at all these weddings?) and at this point in her career, she wasn't that good an actress. Or maybe this is her being good and in that case I just don't think she's all that and a bag of chips.
The funniest scene in my opinion is Hugh stuck in the pantry.
As for the DVD, I have the 1999 disc and it's as bare-bones as you can get (i.e., non "Deluxe Edition"), although it does include a 'Collectible "Making Of" Booklet'--wow! Hopefully the extra bucks get you some extras? Mike Newell did a fantastic Director's Commentary for Donnie Brasco so here's hoping.
It's hard to believe that a romantic comedy was nominated for Best Picture (1994). Then again it seems like the Academy was big into nominating a British film almost every year in the 1990s.
DVD Review: Ok Wedding Movie with Charming Actors
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie wasn't as good as I remembered in my youth. It is one of the cute movies about a man who keeps meeting a mysterious woman at several weddings and a funeral. Are they in love or not? Are they just teasing each other? DVD Review: Charlotte Your blind she looks like a meringue
Summary: 5 Stars
Okay so I watch this movie at least once a year.Its about a dorky English guy who sucks at meeting girls and is always late for weddings.Charles has a horribly shrill ex girlfriend his friends call duck face who carries a torch for him, and is even more pathetic at dating the opposite sex than he is.(If you can believe it) He thinks he is doomed to be single forever, until Charles falls in love with an American Girl wearing a Giant hat at his friend Angus's wedding.
You have to love his friends too. Sarcastic Fi, who seems like kinda of a cold bitch at first , but once you get to know her, you see what she is all about. Bernard and Lydia who have epic sexual chemistry. Gareth who wears loud vests and love to chicken dance.
It also captures the time in your life where everybody is falling in love and getting married but you and all the cheesy dances and costumes and stuff.
DVD Review: "In the words of David Cassidy, in fact, while he was still with the Partridge Family - I think I love you."
Summary: 4 Stars
FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL, made on a pauper's budget, is one of those little British films of which no one was expecting much. Surprisingly, though, it became the little engine that could and garnered much acclaim from fans and critics and cashflow in the theaters. It even shot up to the number one slot in the American box office. This was Hugh Grant's breakthrough film, the one which catapulted him to A-list prominence as a top flight comedic leading man. It made him a star.
Thru the course of four weddings (and one devastating funeral), the movie chronicles the on-again, off-again romance of Charles, chronically tardy at weddings and commitment-phobic (his pals call him "a serial monogamist"), and Carrie, the lovely independent American girl. I got so into this movie that it wasn't until at the end that I realized I didn't even know what these characters - and those in Charles's inner circle - did for a living, only that they seemed to be fairly well-off blokes and girls and a tight-knit, fun-loving bunch of pals. But most of the story does take place within the confines of the weddings (and that one funeral), because those are the only instances in which Charles and Carrie ever interact. But for one exception, that being a sequence in which Charles accidentally bumps into an engaged Carrie and she invites him to accompany her as she tries on different wedding gowns.
The screenplay is ridiculously good. And Mike Newell directs it, and I've always liked his stuff (ENCHANTED APRIL, INTO THE WEST, PUSHING TIN, and HARRY POTTER & THE GOBLET OF FIRE). The romance is nice enough, with Charles almost bemusedly wooing the ravishing Andie MacDowell. Back in 1994, when this movie was released, Andie MacDowell was the biggest name on this roster. At that time in her career, she was doing big things, what with GREEN CARD and GROUNDHOG DAY having done well, and this film only served to garner her even more notice. But if I were to nitpick, it'll be to say that we never do get to know her character as well as we come to know Charles. Even by the end of the film, Carrie comes off as enigmatic. But the love story is only one slice of a very savory pie. There's big heart in this terrifically fleshed-out supporting cast, these actors pitch perfect in their parts and most capable of winning over the audience. However, some are more pitch perfect than others, and so I point out Simon Callow as the gregarious Gareth, John Hannah who delivers a magnificent reading of W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues," and Kristin Scott Thomas who underplays it as the acerbic and sad Fiona. Meanwhile, Rowan Atkinson is simply hilarious as the flustered new priest who gets a chance at conducting his first ever marriage ceremony (in which he breaks out "the Holy Spigot!!" Hah!). But all the actors involved here are wonderful, and that I'd actually feel a measure of sorrow when one of their characters abruptly passes away is a testament to this little film's ability to affect the audience. Charles and his crew, they seem like a great bunch of folks, even if they teeter towards posh.
But Hugh Grant owns this film. Hugh Grant wasn't really on Hollywood's radar before this picture, languishing as he was in forgettable made-for-TV films and overseas cinematic no-hopers. FOUR WEDDINGS is the film which, for the first time, showcased Hugh's comedic flair and impeccable timing. If you think he stammers and flutters those eyelids now, brother, he was a lot worse back in the day. But Hugh Grant oozes such charm and demonstrates such a quick and self-deprecating wit that the awkward habits somehow become disarming. For two samples of the man's dexterity with delivering convoluted lines, check out Charles's wedding toast and also his declaration of love for Carrie, with mad references to David Cassidy thrown in.
What I have is the Deluxe Edition DVD, which offers these special features: Filmmakers' audio commentary, which is okay and sometimes interesting, although, frankly, I would've preferred Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell's two cents (and anyone else's in the cast, for that matter); 5 deleted scenes with optional commentary by the producer (including more with Rowan Atkinson's novice priest); "The Wedding Planners" and "FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL: In the Making" are two behind-the-scenes featurettes; "Two Actors and a Director" is a 5 minute segment of interviews with Director Mike Newell and Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell; a Behind the Scenes photo gallery; promo spots (pretty funny, actually, with Hugh and Andie each getting a 30 second spot to promote the movie); and the theatrical trailer. Not bad.
I can't help but bring up Hugh Grant's later film Notting Hill (Collector's Edition), and partly it's because it holds echoes of FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL. Both films feature an out-of-his-league Englishman romancing an American beauty, although NOTTING HILL is decidedly more fairy tale. Both films have wonderful supporting actors and that tiny whiff of elegance, and both films will make you laugh but then do a one-eighty and make you sad and make you reflect. Oh, but then NOTTING HILL doesn't trot out characters with names like Duckface, Vomiting Veronica, and Miss Piggy. For whatever bragging rights that's worth.
Description of Four Weddings and a Funeral
A surprise hit and one of the highest grossing films ever to come out of Great Britain, this effortlessly enchanting romantic comedy finds confirmed bachelor Hugh Grant (Nine Months) attending weddings with his single friends as they all lament not being able to commit. Grant keeps running into an attractive American (Andie MacDowell) at these festivities and begins a long-running affair with her, even as he attends her own wedding, the funeral of one of his best friends, and his own pending nuptials. Featuring a spirited supporting cast including Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient) as the acerbic friend quietly in love with Grant, this touching and funny film with a mischievous sense of humor and some truly heartbreaking moments is destined to become one of the classic romantic comedies of all time. --Robert LaneComedy DVDs
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