Four Weddings And A Funeral

[tourmaline]

I am watching this on DVD now. It's so bizarre really, I mean it's a great film (except for Andie McDowell - they should have picked Lisa Edelstein for the role of Carrie) even though it's (mostly) happy fluffy-cloud Curtisland where everyone has smart Persil-bright clothes and cute non-dribbly babies and enormously wealthy friends, and there's always fine white snow (never icy roads) in the winter and bright colourful flowers the rest of the year, and none of the Londoners ever use public transport. But I love how Richard Curtis writes about groups of friends, both this and Notting Hill are good examples.

I didn't see this movie in the cinemas. Only person in Britain who didn't. It was released in the middle of my exams, and I thought I would see it when exams were over, I'd been a Hugh Grant fan since I saw Maurice six or seven years previous. By the time exams were over (only a couple of weeks), everyone I asked had already been to see it with someone else. Not one of my bastard friends thought to even ask me, they just wittered on about OMG it's a fabulous film, there's this guy in it called Hugh Grant who's lovely and OMG you must go and see it, but don't expect me to go with you OMG don't be so stupid. And to cap it all that awful theme song, you know the one which makes Madeleine Basset vomit because it's so soppy, was number one in the charts from exam time until Halloween or something.

But I was happy that it was such an enormous success. I was proud of Richard Curtis, he did have the huge success of Blackadder behind him but wasn't particularly well-known; his first film (The Tall Guy - awesome, and I did see that at the cinema) had done well but wasn't considered paricularly mainstream, and now he was deservedly world-famous. And I remember how David Bower's character was praised, it was such a rarity for a deaf character to just appear ordinary back then, and remember this was made only 16 years ago but attitudes towards disabilities were so different then, this was before any legislation was in place, for example. And here was a character who just happened to speak BSL, and it was portrayed no differently than if his character spoke French. And a completely unstereotypical gay couple too. Also rather rare back then.

I eventually saw it when it was released on video, and I bought it with my birthday money, only for Channel Four to show it on TV a week later. It was the first DVD movie I bought that I already owned in another format, there are lots of extras so I saw it as a good investment. And on holiday one year I bought the tie-in book (the script and lots of other stuff - basically a scrapbook of the movie's production and premiere) from a second-hand bookshop.

It's a bit odd sometimes now, watching the film, it's totally unlike any wedding I've been to (not that I've been to many), at real weddings there are no hats the size of dusbin lids, no marquees (they get so humid, not a good idea), I've never seen a bouquet thrown at a wedding, and the bride and groom going-away thing isn't really done any more, last time I saw it happen at a wedding was 1981. But the dresses are pretty and not too overdone, and I love all the night-time lights and atmosphere.

Hm, when I started writing this there was about half an hour of the movie to go. As soon as it finished, I put it on again with the commentary, it's nearly half way through. Awesome.