CONFETTI: DVD

SYNOPSIS:
Britain's leading bridal & wedding glossy, Confetti Magazine, selects three couples to battle it out in a contest for Most Original Wedding of the Year, with a £500,000 house as the big prize. Matt and Samantha ( Martin Freeman, Jessica Stevenson) want a Hollywood musical theme; Josef and Isabelle (Stephen Mangan, Meredith MacNeill) go for their passion, tennis; Michael and Joanna (Robert Webb, Olivia Colman) opt for their hobby, natural (ie nude). Confetti Editor Vivien (Felicity Montagu) and publisher Antoni (Jimmy Carr) engage wedding planners Heron & Hough (Vincent Franklin, Jason Watkins) to assist each couple, but the eight week journey from go to vow is fraught with stress, tension and interfering family members, even putting some of the weddings in jeopardy.

Review by Louise Keller:
The search for the most original wedding of the year results in Confetti, a lively mockumentary-style comedy that is as funny as it is spontaneous. Fresh and offbeat, Debbie Isitt's totally improvised film manages to keep it real enough to bring pathos, crazy enough to make it a hoot. It's the kind of film that Christopher Guest might have dabbled in. A solid British cast headed by Martin Freeman (The Office, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) injects plenty of energy and the outrageously gay wedding planners (Vincent Franklin and Jason Watkins) surprisingly give the film its warmth and heart.

'Your dreams are enough' are Heron and Hough Wedding Planners' promise to deliver the frills and panache for a wedding fantasy. We tag along in the lead up to the final judging, when the three selected couples take centre stage and execute their concepts in a production splashed with theatrical effects. Of course there is plenty of potential with an Esther Williams-type musical routine, a centre court extravaganza and two naturalists who insist on keeping their clothes off.

Sideline characters include a hysterical mother, divorced father with two left feet, an eager pre-marriage counsellor, a plastic surgeon with misplaced ideas and the bride's nightclub dancer sister who fancies herself as a choreographer. Then there's Snoopy the grungy small band rock singer whose ideas as best man are to sing inappropriate lyrics, and a flirtatious Spanish tennis coach called Jesus.

The humour relies on context rather than one-liners, and only once (on the tennis court) does the action push beyond the credible. I loved Heron and Hough's frolics in fairy costumes, as ball boys and naturalists. While their concepts may be over the top, we warm to them because their hearts and passions are transparent. Confetti sparkles where many comedies fail, in its ability to deliver the ridiculous beside the norm. After all, isn't that what life is all about?

Published November 30, 2006