Written by: Susan Granger
http://www.susangranger.com

If you're looking for a Valentine movie this weekend, this lackluster romantic comedy with an edge may be the closest you're going to come.

When shy, strait-laced, insecure Kat (Debra Messing), a Virgin Airways employee based in New York, is invited to her British half-sister's wedding and learns that her former fiancé is to be Best Man, she decides to cash in $6,000 from her 401-K to hire a handsome "male escort" to accompany her to London. Lo and behold! The hunky gigolo is Nick (Dermot Mulroney) with a comparative lit degree from Brown. And if you can believe that, this is the movie for you.

Director Clare Kilner ("How to Deal") and screenwriter Dana Fox, who adapted the story from Elizabeth Young's "Asking for Trouble," combine gender-reversal elements from "Pretty Woman" with the vivacious atmosphere of "Four Weddings and a Funeral." Certainly the inspiration isn't bad even though some of the execution is overly cliché'd and cloyingly cute.

Ebullient Debra Messing, best known for her TV sitcom "Will & Grace," does her best to fit into Julia Roberts' pumps, while Dermot Mulroney ("My Best Friend's Wedding") does the hooker-with-a-heart-and-a brain bit. Amy Adams, Jack Davenport and Jeremy Sheffield fill the bill as Bride, Groom and jerky Best Man, with Holland Taylor as Kat's steadfastly American, critical mother and Sarah Parish as a blunt British cousin. Too bad costume designer Louise Page couldn't come up with more flattering, less frothy outfits; she fails in the fashionista department.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Wedding Date" is a meandering, occasionally funny, wannabe fanciful 4. But St. Hugh's Church and the English countryside look beautiful.

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