Review: Love Wedding Repeat

Release date: April 10, 2020
Running time: 100 minutes
Starring: Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn, Freida Pinto, Eleanor Tomlinson

Love Wedding Repeat is a Groundhog Day-like movie where, at his sister Hayley's (Tomlinson) wedding, Jack (Claflin) is hoping to correct a missed opportunity with a girl that happened years ago.  Three years earlier, Jack had some bad luck and missed cues, and could not connect with Hayley's friend Dina (Munn) in Italy.  Now, at his sister's wedding, he sees an opportunity to finally make that connection.  But unfortunately, the wedding has its own crazy cast of characters and events that might get in the way of this. 

Love Wedding Repeat is a pretty standard romantic comedy with a Groundhog Day twist.  You have a group of friends with very different quirks and histories, all forced together to make Hayley's day special.  Headlining the cast is Sam Claflin, who plays a very Hugh Grant character in this film: charming, attractive, but with a certain amount of nervousness that seems to get in the way of getting what he wants.  He is fun to watch and really excels as the lead.  His best friend Bryan (Joel Fry) is also fun to watch and a good complement to the more reserved Jack.  Joel Fry was great in Yesterday and he is equally likable and funny in this movie.  The rest of the cast are all various shades of quirky and their interactions are fun to see.  The craziness of these characters makes up the majority of the plot.  And their interactions and the love and consequences of these interactions are also the catalysts to most of the problems for Hayley's wedding.

Love Wedding Repeat is an perfectly enjoyable film.  It has funny jokes and some equally loving and cringe-worthy scenarios.  The lengths that Jack has to go to save Hayley's wedding are extreme; they are exciting, heartwarming, and stressful to watch.  But the complexity of what Jack has to do also is one of my problems with this film.  For a Goundhog Day-like movie, there just isn't that much of the "repeat" part of the title.  There are two basic long runs, and a couple hinted at other scenarios that might happen, but you don't get a whole lot of actual, substantial repetition.  I'm not sure if other scenarios were cut for time or if they just never were supposed to happen, but I would have liked to have some additional wedding takes fleshed out for the film.  The first scenario takes over half of the film, so you're really not getting much after that.  But that being said, this is still a fun, interesting romantic comedy to make you smile and cringe during these turbulent times.

Love Wedding Repeat will warm your heart during this quarantine time with its fun cast at an exciting, endearing, and stressful wedding.

Rent it.