Four Weddings and a Funeral - 1994
Rating - 15
Director - Mike Newell
Written by - Richard Curtis
Starring - Hugh Grant, Andie Macdowell, Kristin Scott Thomas, Rowan Atkinson
Run time - 117 minutes
Four Weddings and a Funeral is a 1994 romantic-comedy-drama and is the first in a series of highly successful rom-coms from writer Richard Curtis.
The film follows loveable introvert Charles (Hugh Grant) and his group of friends at (obviously) four weddings and a funeral where they each find love. At the first wedding, Charles meets a young American woman called Carrie (Andie Macdowell), who his smitten by and sleeps with. Though she quickly flees in the morning for America.
Three months later, Charles and Carrie meet again at the wedding of Bernard and Lydia, who coupled up at the previous wedding. Though Charles is devastated when Carrie is accompanied by her new fiancé Hamish and is further humiliated by several of his ex-girlfriends including a distressed Henrietta aka Duckface. So Charles flees to an empty guest suite and watches Carrie and Hamish leave outside. Though the newlyweds show up and Charles hides in a cupboard while they have sex and he slips awkwardly out the room.
The next month, Charles receives an invitation to Carrie’s wedding and while shopping for a gift, they bump into each other and he helps her pick her wedding dress. Charles does tell her he loves her, but Carrie ignores it. The following month, it’s Carrie’s wedding in Scotland. The sociable Gareth tells the clique of singles to go out and find potential partners when Charles best friend Fiona tells him she’s had a crush on him since they’d first met. Charles doesn’t respond. But while Hamish is presenting a toast Gareth has a heart attack and dies.
At Gareth’s funeral, his partner Matthew performs the poem Funeral Blues by homosexual poet W. H. Auden to pay tribute to his relationship with him. After a brief moment with Carrie, Charles and Fiona’s brother Tom decide the search for “one true love” is pointless.
Ten months later, Charles' wedding arises and the bride turns out to be Henrietta. Before the ceremony, Charles starts having second thoughts when Carrie arrives and tells him she has left Hamish but still goes on with the wedding. When the vicar asks if there is any reason why the couple shouldn't get married, Charles’ deaf brother David says in sign language that he suspects the groom loves someone else. Charles confirms, Henrietta punches him and the wedding is stopped.
A few hours later, Carrie shows up at Charles flat to apologize, but Charles confesses, at the altar, he realized that the only person he loved was Carrie and makes a proposal to a life together without marriage as he is scared of commitment. At the end of the film, it announces the couple had a baby.
The film was made in six weeks and cost just under 3 million pounds. The film was not originally expected to be a hit but was a major success and became the highest-grossing British movie ever at the time. The movie made $234.7 million worldwide and showers of awards with it. The film also made an international star of Hugh Grant and ranked 23rd on the British Film Institute’s 100 Greatest British Films of the 21st century.
Score - 10/10
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