Love, Wedding, Marriage: Oy

As if written by a robot whose frame of reference wasn’t human reality but merely fairy-tale romantic comedies, Love, Wedding, Marriage strips genre tropes down to their scrawny, brittle bones. Inspired to become a marriage counselor by her mom (Jane Seymour) and dad’s (James Brolin) bedrock fidelity, Eva (Mandy Moore) alienates new spouse Charlie (Kellan Lutz) when she discovers that her parents are on the verge of divorce—right before their 30th anniversary party!—and zealously dedicates herself to saving their union. Complicated by inconsequential bit players, her mission is marked by endless contrivances, none more tone-deaf than Brolin’s sudden Orthodox Jewish piousness, which has him spout “kvetching” and “meshuggeneh” as if the Yiddish words were punchlines themselves. Actor-turned-director Dermot Mulroney engages in a Guinness World Record–courting number of bland shot-reverse shot sequences, though his film’s ungainly visuals are no flatter than dramedic scenarios involving Brolin drunkenly stomping on a fish, Seymour suffering through awful speed-dating sessions, and multiple revelations about secret affairs, nuptials, and children that elicit wide-eyed exasperation from a monotonous Moore. Comprised only of half-hearted melodramatics and schmaltzy bromides, the film offers nothing new but plenty of things that are old, borrowed, and apt to make one blue.