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6 reasons Love Wedding Repeat is one of the most cringeworthy movies on Netflix.

 

This article contains spoilers for the Netflix movie Love Wedding Repeat. Which shouldn’t be an issue because… nevermind.

You know a movie is bad when you turn it off three quarters of the way through, during a worldwide lockdown.

Like the whole world is literally closed.

You have nowhere to be. You have nothing left to watch. You’ve watched all the Tik Toks and you’ve seen everyone slowly unravel on Instagram.

You’ve literally been instructed by the Prime Minister to sit inside and watch bad romantic comedies (I’m pretty sure that’s what he said) and still.

Love Wedding Repeat is so bad that given all the time in the world, it feels like a waste of time.

Watch: The trailer for Netflix’s Love Wedding Repeat. Post continues below.

Video by Netflix

When I first saw the ad for the film – starring Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn, and Eleanor Tomlinson – I was so embarrassingly excited. A comedy. About a wedding. Set in an Italian castle. With pretty dresses. Like Four Weddings and a Funeral meets Bridesmaids meets My Best Friend’s Wedding. But Love Wedding Repeat is none of those things. Because it is terrible.

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The plot. The script. The acting. All of it.

But time is a thing I have a lot of right now, so after gasping at the sheer atrociousness of what I was watching, and switching it off, I decided it was my duty to write about how bad this film is, which I couldn’t ethically do without having seen the whole thing. So I turned it back on. And it got worse.

These are just six (of 800) reasons Love Wedding Repeat is one of the cringiest movies on Netflix.

1. The premise is ridiculous.

Love Wedding Repeat begins with Jack (Sam Claflin) saying goodbye to Dina (Olivia Munn) – a friend of his sister Hayley – after a magical weekend together in Rome. It’s not made clear why it was magical, or what the basis for their romantic connection is, or whether they even have anything in common, but none of that matters. Because Jack leans in to kiss Dina and YES he’s obviously interrupted by a chance encounter with an old friend who has no social awareness.

The friend insists they travel back to London together, and refuses to give Jack a moment of privacy to farewell Dina. And Jack is British. So he’s overly polite. Which means instead of saying, ‘hey, can I just have a minute in private to say goodbye to my friend here?’ he splutters and shakes Dina’s hand and then doesn’t contact her at all for three years.

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Fast forward, and it's the day of Jack's sister's wedding (no, it's literally been three years. And at no point did it occur to Jack to like, Facebook message the girl he apparently had a magical connection with). Moments before the ceremony, Hayley (Eleanor Tomlinson) informs Jack that Dina has decided to come at the last minute, which makes him splutter. While Hayley's ceremony goes ahead without a hitch, she soon discovers her teenage ex-boyfriend Marc (Jack Farthing) has crashed her wedding.

Instead of asking security to escort him out (or asking the valid question of: how the hell did you know the time and location of my wedding?), Hayley decides the only logical solution is to get Jack to drug Marc with a sleeping medicine she happens to have in her handbag.

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Jack puts the medicine in Marc's wine glass (because when people show up uninvited to a wedding, someone usually just adds them to the seating plan??), but then a group of children come and rearrange all the place cards - which seems like a boring game, tbh.

And that's the premise. Who will end up drugged with sleeping medicine? Will Marc ruin the wedding we have no investment in? Will Jack end up with Dina - despite the fact we haven't even witnessed them have a conversation?

No one's decision-making up until this point makes any sense, which makes it very difficult to... care. What... happens. To these.... people.

2. Sam Claflin is not Hugh Grant.

Claflin's brief for his character in this film was clearly 'be Hugh Grant but make it 2020,' and it doesn't work.

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It's not.... the same.
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Only Hugh Grant can do the awkward, stumbling, so-polite-he-sabotages-his-own-life British thing, and honestly, sometimes it even seems silly when he does it.

Throughout Love Wedding Repeat, Claflin finds himself slapped by his ex-girlfriend (who is obviously sitting next to him, because everyone puts exes on the same table at weddings), punched in the nose, repeatedly interrupted by 'emergencies' which take him away from what he actually wants to do - which is apparently spending time with Dina - and caught in a compromising position in the bathroom with his friend, Bryan.

In most instances, simply telling the truth ('I accidentally ingested a sleeping medicine!' 'I'm trying to help my sister because her ex just crashed her wedding!') would completely salvage the situation. But instead, Claflin splutters and makes bad decisions and behaves strangely and it's more frustrating than endearing.

3. The comedy is... bad.

I believe in my soul that someone wrote a draft script for Love Wedding Repeat that was meant to be reviseand editeand most importantly have comedy added to it but that wasn't communicated and then someone accidentally just went ahead and made the movie.

One of the recurring 'jokes' is about a character named Sidney, who wears a kilt to the wedding even though he's not Scottish. He then talks about his testicles being uncomfortable and adjusts them in front of female wedding guests. Cool.

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Then there's Bryan, who wants to be called the Man of Honour but the bride insists he remain the Maid of Honour. Which is meant to be funny because he's a man!!! Not a lady!!

Then there's the physical comedy of someone falling asleep at a wedding because they've ingested sleeping medicine, which isn't all that surprising, and a character named Chaz who's dating Jack's ex-girlfriend, and develops an obsession with his comparative penis size.

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Clever.
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It's just... bad. That's the only word for it. And not even cheesy, escapism bad. Like average Year 10 drama bad.

4. It's entirely unoriginal.

Love Wedding Repeat has a strikingly similar plot to Four Weddings and a Funeral - with an awkward Englishman falling in love with an American woman, while facing humiliation from a 'crazy' ex-girlfriend.

They even straight-up steal a joke from Four Weddings, with Rebecca (Aisling Bea) chatting to Amanda (Freida Pinto) about the 'd*ckhead' she was dating, but it's the guy she's still dating! Who's standing right beside her!

The schtick of Love Wedding Repeat is familiar because it's the same one we've seen time and time again - in Four Weddings, Notting Hill and Love Actually: posh people swearing, posh people desperately trying to be polite when things are falling apart, and posh people generally doing things posh people never do.

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When in doubt, introduce a man with a kilt. Four Weddings and a Funeral (left) vs. Love Wedding Repeat (right).
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Then there's some Sliding Doors thrown in, with alternate versions of events playing out, as well as caricatures that appear to be inspired by every other British rom com of the last 20 years.

You can't just... borrow the plot and jokes and characters from other movies, throw it together and make me watch it? But you also can? Because I did?

5. Plot holes. So many plot holes.

I've already mentioned the twist in Love Wedding Repeat - that after one scenario unfolds (in which it appears Hayley's new husband Roberto... dies??), we rewind and see what might have happened if the place cards had been arranged differently.

The film quickly flashes through a few versions of events, before settling on a final one, and that's what we see play out in full. At no point is it explained what the true reality is, but that's honestly the least significant plot hole here.

In the first series of events, Dina has to leave suddenly because she receives a call from work (she's a war correspondent, not that Jack ever... asks her about it). Another wedding guest offers her a lift, and it's implied she ends up with him instead.

In the final series of events, Dina doesn't get a call requiring her to leave the wedding.

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WHY.

If the ONLY thing in the world that changed was the arrangement of place cards on one table at a wedding in Italy, why would extraneous factors change? Dina not having to leave is crucial because it's how she and Jack (spoiler) eventually end up together.

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????

Also in the final series of events, a conversation between Jack and Marc convinces Marc not to spoil Hayley's wedding by announcing he slept with her two weeks ago (which is the storyline that plays out initially). The conversation is entirely unconvincing and consists solely of 'if you love her, you won't ruin her wedding...' but somehow it's enough to drastically change Marc's behaviour. However, with Marc not announcing the cheating scandal, it simply never gets... addressed. And Hayley continues on with her marriage despite the fact she cheated on her husband. And that's apparently not an issue. At all.

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Cool.

6. The ending is not even a little bit romantic.

In fairness, it's hard to have a romantic ending when the audience has little to no investment in any of the characters. Mostly because the person responsible for character development was apparently watching Four Weddings and a Funeral on repeat and stealing... jokes.

But everything about the ending of this film is flat.

After ingesting the sleeping medicine himself and falling asleep while Dina tells him about the death of her mother, Jack tells Dina how he really feels about her. She essentially says: that's lovely, and I felt the same, but I guess it wasn't our time.

Jack goes back into the wedding and has some uninspiring conversation with his friend Bryan, before deciding he's always putting everyone before himself (is he???) and he needs to fight for what he wants. So he runs and finds Dina (who should be at work) and they kiss. The end.

Dude.

She just told you she wasn't keen.

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You've also done nothing but behave terribly for every minute you've known this woman.

WHY IS THIS MOVIE SO BAD.

The fact I've now written an entire article about a Netflix movie so cringeworthy I turned it off, says everything about the times we're living in.

But do not watch Love Wedding Repeat. Not even if you have nothing left to do. Not even if the Prime Minister tells you to.

Because it will break your face with cringe. And we can't afford another health crisis right now.

For more from Clare Stephens, you can follow her on FacebookInstagram or Twitter.