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The Wedding Tackle
UK 1999
Reviewed by Keith Perry
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
London, the present. Vinni and Hal are engaged but have unspoken doubts about their upcoming marriage. Hal's friend Mac, who's sleeping with barmaid Petula, organises Hal's stag night. Present at the stag night are Vinni's ex-lover Ted and Hal's flatmate Salty, who has recently split with girlfriend Clodagh over the disappearance of her pet rat Roy. Unknown to her, Hal has a photograph of his own pet snake eating Roy.
Vinni confesses her misgivings about the marriage to Clodagh; the two join the stag night. Ted reveals a list allegedly containing the names of people with whom Hal has had sex. Clodagh is on the list. Ted plans to have the wedding cancelled by photographing Hal in bed with Petula, but Petula mistakenly seduces Salty. George, Petula's husband (who's a policeman), corners Petula and Salty; Clodagh knocks him unconscious.
Hal tells Mac he wants the engagement broken off and plans to catch Vinni with another man. He suggests Ted; Mac offers himself. Ted and Salty have a violent run-in with a taxi driver but escape. As revenge for his revealing the list of Hal's alleged ex-lovers, Clodagh has Ted arrested. George locks him in a cell with the taxi driver. A dominatrix later ensnares Salty. Mac's fake seduction of Vinni is reciprocated with genuine affection. Envious when Vinni leaves with Mac, Hal goes home with Clodagh. Having seen the picture revealing Roy's true fate, Clodagh ties Hal to a bed and tortures him.
Review
For a film claiming to focus on the hidden venality among old friends, The Wedding Tackle gives little suggestion of selfish streaks beneath longtime amity. Those characters who are egotistical or mean duly get their comeuppance. Adrian Dunbar's quiet-spoken Mac, meanwhile, is altruistic to the last and walks off with friend Hal's former fiancée, Vinni. The press notes may describe the film as a "machiavellian comedy of errors", but here the nice guy finishes first.
Coming in the wake of other ensemble British comedies such as This Year's Love and the cheerfully polysexual Bedrooms and Hallways, The Wedding Tackle - set during a stag night for reluctant groom-to-be Hal - also feels anonymous and very straight. There's no sense of contemporary London (at a trendy nightclub, punks dance to the Box Tops' pop hit 'The Letter'), while Mac is mortified to discover that Hal may once have had sex with a man. Screenwriter Nigel Horne throws some nice lines into the mix (after Mac comments on prospective wife Vinni's intelligence, Hal enthusiastically nods: "I know: potential major breadwinner"), but creates a situation in which nothing is at stake. The aborted-marriage scenario works most effectively (as in Robert Altman's A Wedding, 1978) when the social embarrassment is seen to work on those it hits most keenly, the parents. Horne, however, restricts himself to one generation; given they are so mismatched, Hal and Vinni ditching their marriage plans is actually to the benefit of all concerned.
Once the stag night is underway, Horne bats between the girls and the lads with clunking irony. Vinni's line to best friend Clodagh about her boyfriend, "at least you can trust Salty", cuts directly to Salty cheating on her in a toilet cubicle. (The Foley artists went to town here - it's the most audible fellatio scene since Pierre Salvadori's Wild Target.)
Debut director and former stage actor Rami Dvir opts for a functional, televisual mise en scène, with an even editing rhythm, shallow rack focusing and flat blocking (a dialogue scene involving six characters in a pub has everyone facing camera). Horne creates one promising scene - where Salty has to kill a cat with a shovel to prevent an irate taxi driver from snapping his friend Ted's neck - but Dvir fails to draw out its latent sense of humour or menace.
The experienced cast members are mostly given parts that bring to mind roles they have already played on television: Neil Stuke's Salty is similar to the sexually frustrated mooncalf he perfected in the BBC sitcom Game On, while Leslie Grantham, as psychotic cuckold George, is called on to repeat his leering routine from Channel 5's high-concept game show Fort Boyard. The one true delight on offer here is the post-rehab Tony Slattery - now puffy, morose and adenoidal - giving a relatively controlled performance as Vinni's ex-lover Ted. The pleasure is derived partly from schadenfreude over his past self-indulgences, partly from his relaxed performance, but mainly from our ironic recognition that his character is fun only when he's drunk.
Credits
- Director
- Rami Dvir
- Producer
- Nigel Horne
- Screenplay
- Nigel Horne
- Director of Photography
- Shelley Hirst
- Editors
- Matthew Tabern
- Mike Latham
- Production Designer
- Sarah Beaman
- Music/Orchestrations
- Charles Hodgkinson
- Kirk Zavieh
- ©Blackberry Ltd.
- Production Company
- A Viking Films production
- Executive Producer
- Don Horne
- Line Producer
- Anne Boyd
- Production Co-ordinator
- Jacqueline McGee
- Location Manager
- Peter Hoar
- Assistant Directors
- Fiona Black
- Radford Neville
- Yohan McDonald
- Script Supervisor
- Pauline Gaunt
- Casting
- Jackie Hare
- Script Editor
- Jilly Horne
- Camera Operator
- John Hembrough
- Art Directors
- Sarah Nelson
- Prep:
- Mark Digby
- Caricature/Cartoons
- Jed Stone
- Photographs in Hal's Studio
- Rob Clifford
- Scenic Artist
- Alan Wood
- Costume Designer
- Jane Spicer
- Wardrobe Mistress
- Claire Porter
- Make-up Supervisor
- Jane Jamieson
- Make-up/Hair Artist
- Emma Scott
- Titles/Opticals
- General Screen Enterprises
- Music Supervisors
- Roz Colls
- Music Matters
- Soundtrack
- "I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten", "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" - Dusty Springfield; "Girl Don't Come", "Long Live Love", "Puppet on a String" - Sandie Shaw; "Something Tells Me (Something's Gonna Happen Tonight)" - Cilla Black; "You've Got Your Troubles" - The Fortunes; "Walking Back to Happiness" - Helen Shapiro; "Where Do You Go to My Lovely" - Peter Sarstedt; "You Were Made for Me" - Freddy and the Dreamers;
- "Lightnin' Strikes" - Lou Christie; "Lovesick Blues" - Frank Ifield; "Bobby's Girl" - Susan Maughan; "Dance On" - Kathy Kirby; "The Letter" - The Box Tops; "I'm a Tiger", "Boom Bang a Bang" - Lulu
- Sound Recordist
- Matthew Harmer
- Re-recording Mixers
- Nic Le Messurier
- Brendan Nicholson
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Andy Kennedy
- Dialogue Editor
- Jonathan Cronin
- ADRMixer
- Sandy Buchanan
- Foley
- Artists:
- Andie Derrick
- Peter Burgis
- Mixer:
- Sandy Buchanan
- Animals
- A1 Animals
- Cast
- Adrian Dunbar
- Mr Mac
- James Purefoy
- Hal
- Tony Slattery
- Little Ted
- Neil Stuke
- Salty
- Leslie Grantham
- George
- Victoria Smurfit
- Clodagh
- Susan Vidler
- Vinni
- Amanda Redman
- Petula
- Martin Armstrong
- Trev
- Sara Stockbridge
- Felicity
- Roger Gartland
- vicar
- Al Hunter Ashton
- taxi driver
- Saul Cambridge
- head chef
- Mark Gilvary
- barman
- Marshall Lancaster
- chief with chops
- Gary Ross
- police sergeant
- Diane Worswick
- barmaid
- Brad Shaw
- chef with melon
- Angela Saul
- cat owner
- Jilly Horne
- girl in the crypt
- Sally Horne
- barmaid in The Gallery
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Ratpack Films Limited
- 8,360 feet
- 92 minutes 54 seconds
- Dolby Digital
- Colour/Prints by
- DeLuxe