Screen
Alleva, Richard
SCREEN TILL DEATH DO US PART 'FOUR WEDDINGS & A FUNERAL' he great strength of Richard Curtis' s script for the comedy, Four Weddings and a Funeral, isn't its dialogue (though there...
...A masterful cameo by the genius of discomfort, Rowan Atkinson...
...Observe the way people from one gathering reappear at a later one in a very different light simply because they are performing different functions...
...A young woman notices an attractive deaf man at the first marriage and courts him at a later one with her new skill in sign language...
...Yet there's a dead flower in this wedding bouquet and it's fight in the center of the cluster...
...A seminarian who's just a shy guest at the first wedding becomes the presiding priest at the second and nearly capsizes the wedding vows with his spectacular ineptitude...
...When Charles, near the fade-out, catches up with Andie MacDowell in the rain and asks her to consider "not being married to me for the rest of your life," it's just a hip way of popping the traditional question...
...An unassuming gay man, usually overshadowed by his rambunctious companion at weddings, becomes eloquent in his pain when eulogizing that same companion at the funeral...
...And Newell has cast a lot of talented actors, led by Hugh Grant as Charles, and drawn sterling work from them...
...The same deaf man (Charles's brother) signs his enthusiasm for a woman's bust but Charles deliberately mistranslates ("Ah, Scotland...
...Alas, the impediment is already there, courtesy of scriptwriter Curtis...
...Curtis' s marvelous crossword puzzle of a plot has been deftly filled in by director Mike Newell with an economy that is sometimes funny in itself, as when a rapid succession of closeups of ringless fingers tells hapless best man Charles that no one has a substitute for the wedding ring he has forgotten...
...But several scenes later, Charles mistranslates some verbal remarks into sign language for the precise purpose of embarrassing his brother who's just done Charles an ill turn...
...The basic action of this comedy is as time-honored (or time-worn) as they come: a young person' s search for true love...
...In his effort to portray the MacDowell character as Commonweal 6 May 1994:17...
...We are meant to envision them enjoying a marriage of true minds to which no man should admit impediment...
...in order to spare the young lady embarrassment...
...SCREEN TILL DEATH DO US PART 'FOUR WEDDINGS & A FUNERAL' he great strength of Richard Curtis' s script for the comedy, Four Weddings and a Funeral, isn't its dialogue (though there are many funny lines), nor its characterizations (which keep the plot humming but are rarely interesting in themselves), nor the passages of physical humor (only a cut above the better TV sitcoms...
...Beautiful mountains...
...Curtis's special triumph here is in the sheer arrangement of the action, the crafting of a plot in which events and character quirks rhyme, contrast with, reverse, and echo one another as the hero, Charles, a young man who despairs of ever finding true love, staggers through the five ceremonies of the title...
Vol. 121 • May 1994 • No. 9
