movie review love wedding repeat

Love. Wedding. Repeat

Generally, repetition is a great learning tool but a fraught narrative device. It can wear out its welcome, rendering its joke meaningless or only adding time to the length of a movie. There are, of course, some brilliant exceptions like “ Groundhog Day ” or “Russian Doll,” but Dean Craig ’s “Love. Wedding. Repeat” is not one of them. Our characters here are not so much stuck in a time loop, as they are in a very lazy movie filled with cliches and middle school-level humor, and which starts over half-way through the events for no reason. The joke is on anyone who mistakes this movie for entertainment. 

Written and directed by Craig, “Love. Wedding. Repeat” begins with an interrupted first kiss. Jack ( Sam Claflin ) and Dina ( Olivia Munn ) hit it off over the past few days during her visit to Italy, but just before he can make a move, an old friend of his interrupts and offers him an inopportune ride to the airport. Years later, on the day of Jack’s sister Hayley’s ( Eleanor Tomlinson ) wedding, they meet again by chance—and are also rudely interrupted by it. As the narrator billed as The Oracle ( Penny Ryder ) rambles on about love and chance, a group of kids wreaks havoc on the seating order of their table. Predictable chaos ensues as Jack is seated by his ex Amanda ( Freida Pinto ) and her new insecure beau Chaz ( Allan Mustafa ), Hayley’s reluctant maid of honor Bryan ( Joel Fry ) is seated by his filterless ex Rebecca ( Aisling Bea ), Dina is seated by a nightmare guest ( Tim Key ) who only talks about himself and a coke-addled former flame of Hayley’s, Marc ( Jack Farthing ), has crashed the party to ruin her big day. It falls on Jack to salvage the day and re-connect with Dina before it’s too late. 

“Love. Wedding. Repeat” wants to have its cake and eat it, too. I can’t tell if the movie tried to skewer ridiculous rom-com conventions or make a failed replica, but the result is off-putting in any case. Whatever air of romance the Italian villa setting and cinematographer Hubert Taczanowski attempts to conjure up is ruined by just about everything else on screen. The crowded ensemble is rife with one-note, boorish characters who are much too clueless about human interaction to tolerate for copious amounts of time. Then, there’s the disembodied voice of The Oracle who makes us relive Hayley’s wedding day but with the table rearranged to give us a different outcome—for no discernible reason or explanation. No time loop, no rip in the space-time continuum, just because deus ex machina said so. 

The movie focuses on the gaggle of insufferable English-speaking bridal guests, even though it’s set in Italy and Hayley’s Italian husband’s family make up what looks like most of the party. (Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that they’re marginalized and out of the picture.) So much of the banter, and even some of the narration, centers on dick jokes that are more sad attempts at humor than anything else. When explaining the role of chance in love, The Oracle says that chance can give love “a kick in the balls.” Dina’s unwanted party guest complains a handful of times about the state of his testicles under his kilt. Chaz is so insecure in his testy relationship with Amanda, that he engages Jack in a figurative dick measuring contest. I’m sorry to say, the attempts at humor do not improve.

Unfortunately, there’s also a half-hearted attempt at what resembles slapstick humor and a familiar comedy cliche: accidentally giving the wrong person a strong sedative. That person (in both versions of the movie’s “Repeat” part) then gets to play out the physical repercussions of their mistakes, simply playing drugged, tumbling over themselves and slurring their words. Possibly the worst so-called bit in the movie is the recurring threat of Marc playing a coke-fueled Pepé Le Pew type who won’t take no for an answer, effectively harassing and somewhat blackmailing Hayley on her wedding day. These are the most cringe-worthy scenes in a sea of feel-bad moments.

The best thing that can be said about “Love. Repeat. Wedding” is that it hates both genders equally. Nobody knows how to communicate with one another, which is weird to watch many adults fumble the simplest conversations. For instance, even as Chaz can’t stop comparing himself to Jack, his fiancee Amanda yells at him, scolds him and never seems to treat him with much kindness. It’s hard to even feel for the main characters when the entire movie could have been avoided if Jack had asked Dina for her number back in the day. You could revisit the 2012 French romantic comedy, “Plan de Table” instead of its English-language remake, but maybe that’s too much repetition for one day.                      

Available on Netflix today, 4/10.

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

• Sam Claflin as Jack
• Olivia Munn as Dina
• Eleanor Tomlinson as Hayley
• Freida Pinto as Amanda
• Aisling Bea as Rebecca
• Jack Farthing as Marc
• Joel Fry as Bryan
• Allan Mustafa as Chaz
• Tim Key as Sidney

Writer (based upon the motion picture "Plan de table" by)

• Christelle Raynal
• Francis Nief
• Christian Sandino-Taylor

Cinematographer

• Hubert Taczanowski

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Love. Wedding. Repeat Reviews

The biggest flaw of Love Wedding Repeat however is how it wastes the Repeat aspect of its title... Best to simply RSVP “not attending” because this is one wedding that should be avoided at all costs.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 11, 2022

I found it easy to root for the cast who deserve a ton of credit for keeping the film afloat. But even they can’t sustain it among a deluge of half-witted gags, crass and shallow dialogue, and uninspired storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Aug 23, 2022

Perfectly harmless lockdown viewing, but no more than that.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 11, 2021

You'd need a different title and even more craziness, but an arguably better variation of this story would have been one simply taking us from beginning to end. Once.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 28, 2021

Could have used a little more door slamming to amp up the farcical nature of the story but provides a diversion in these strange times, an unusual, if somewhat predictable, rom com with (no spoiler here, you knew this was coming) a happy ending.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 30, 2021

I laughed...I liked most of the characters. I was dazzled by the Rome setting. And the story is...so proudly implausible that I... willingly wallowed in its ridiculous excesses.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 24, 2020

The biggest problem with this movie is that even in the often-unrealistic genre of romantic comedies, Love Wedding Repeat is filled with so many conversations and scenarios that are too phony to take.

Full Review | Jul 16, 2020

More than love and romance, there is confusion in the air in Love Wedding Repeat.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 13, 2020

The unpredictability of its plot generates authentic moments of laughter and fun. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 10, 2020

The action-packed script could be a passable British farce. Alas, the director and screenwriter Dean Craig instead favors British chagrin plus an overdose of noblesse disdain

Full Review | Original Score: C | May 21, 2020

Deserving of a quick-fire divorce, Love. Wedding. Repeat is an entirely joyless affair, wasting a guest list of impressive actors with excruciating dialogue and sub-par levels of farce

Full Review | May 11, 2020

Absolutely terrible unfunny Netflix romantic comedy

Full Review | Original Score: 2/10 | May 7, 2020

As a filmmaker with promising comic chops but one too many Richard Curtis DVDs, the clearly talented but heavily derivative Craig may need to borrow less from his predecessors and take a chance...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 23, 2020

This broad, not-very-funny farce only has one original idea in its head - to restart a film that wasn't working - and it doesn't exploit it to its full potential. What a disappointment.

Full Review | Apr 21, 2020

You hope for a version of Love, Actually or Four Weddings and a Funeral from this British comedy. However, you get mush.

Although Love Wedding Repeat's committed cast find haphazard humour in their character's plight, they are hampered by a torpid storyline and a string of threadbare gags.

Full Review | Apr 20, 2020

I feel as if this movie was a missed opportunity, one that could have been executed better. It's a good effort but at the end of the day it just didn't come together.

"Love. Wedding. Repeat" isn't quite "Four Weddings and a Funeral," but it scratches that same itch, serving up a comforting cocktail of wacky and sometimes realistically raunchy adult humor with heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 18, 2020

It's perfectly possible to have a very good time watching Love Wedding Repeat even if you know exactly where it's going from the very first shot to the last.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 17, 2020

Sam Claflin's comedic turn is welcoming and hilarious in this modern wedding romance story.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 17, 2020

‘Love Wedding Repeat’ on Netflix: Film Review

Sam Claflin gives you that '90s Hugh Grant feeling in a captivating romantic comedy set entirely at a wedding, which becomes an escalating romantic disaster — until it starts all over again.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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In a romantic comedy, any good-looking British actor can probably coast along on his charm and accent and manners. But to do what Hugh Grant did in the ’90s — to make you believe that for all his cultivation and civilized sex appeal, he lives inside a spectacular thicket of self-doubt that’s even more enchanting than pure confidence…well, that takes a true actor, and maybe a star. And that’s the quality Sam Claflin has in the minor but captivating “Love Wedding Repeat.” He plays Jack, who spends his sister’s wedding trying to put out a dozen fires at once (and to woo the love of his life, who he may never see again). To say that the character is working overtime to hold himself together would be an understatement. He’s exquisitely flummoxed.

At the outset we hear a narrator, who sounds like the ribald version of a “Masterpiece Theatre” host (to my ears it sounded like Judi Dench, though there’s no listing in the credits), as she offers up cynical bites of wisdom like “One bit of bad luck, and it all goes tits up.” It , in this case, being life.

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The opening sequence is set in Rome, where Jack has just been shown around the city by his sister’s friend, an American war journalist named Dina ( Olivia Munn ). As their moment of farewell approaches, they appear to be warming up to a first kiss, but they’re interrupted by a pushy former school chum of Jack’s who offers to take him to the airport. And Jack is so nice and polite that he can’t nudge the dude away; he blows his big moment. In movies, this sort of “Quick, call the life coach!” ineptitude can be a funny thing, but when the comedy of romantic anxiety approaches the threshold of pain, it’s no mere laughing matter. Claflin, in this role, shows Grant’s ability to keep a scene of stammering geekishness light and bubbly and, at the same time, sincere.

Popular on Variety

Three years later, the film cuts to a sun-drenched Roman villa where Haley (Eleanor Tomlinson), Jack’s peachy-sweet and frazzled sister, is marrying Roberto (Tiziano Caputo), a courtly Italian who’s elegant with a touch of mystery, like a missing Corleone brother. The rest of the film is set at the wedding reception, an idealized afternoon it views as a roving microcosm of human foible and folly. Dina is there, so Jack will get another chance to connect with her. They’ve both had failed relationships in between, and given how they melted together before, you think: What could go wrong? The answer, of course, is everything. Yet the quirky elegance of “Love Wedding Repeat” is that it keeps the mishaps flowing in a life-size way.

The writer-director, Dean Craig, has written and produced episodes of shows like “Hit the Road” and “Off the Hook,” but this is his first time directing, and he’s got a spry and glancing champagne touch, a way of crafting scenes that go right to your head. “Love Wedding Repeat” is a loose riff on the 2012 French movie “Plan de Table,” and it unfolds, more or less, in real time, which gives it an existential comedy-of-suspense element that trumps the usual Styrofoam rom-com plotting. The classical music playing in the background doesn’t make the film stodgy; it creates a sustained operatic flow.

And the actors are simply terrific, from Claflin, who manages to be all-thumbs neurotic and matinee-idol dashing at the same time, to Olivia Munn, who knocks dialogue back and forth with ping-pong timing even as she summons the ravishing glamour of Sophia Loren, to Joel Fry, who plays Haley’s “man of honor” Bryan as a gangly soul who’s like Kramer from “Seinfeld” crossed with Hamlet, to Eleanor Tomlinson as the bride who’s all but quivering with the secret that could ruin her life, to Jack Farthing as the coked-up stalker who shows up to spill it, to Freida Pinto as Jack’s imperious sharp-tongued ex to Allan Mustafa as her dull-witted music-producer boyfriend (whose obsession with the size of his genitals is a farce that’s also a crusade), to Tim Key as a kilt-wearing car-insurance salesman whose cluelessness with the ladies is matched only by his confidence.

The movie, even as it percolates with romantic hope, turns into a slow-motion chain reaction of disaster. It all emerges  from the glitch that takes place when Haley orders Jack to spike a champagne flute with a powerful sleeping sedative, so that Marc the stalker won’t spill the beans on the fact that he and Haley shagged a few weeks ago. But the wrong person gets drugged, and the rest is (farcical) misery.

That is, until the movie, halfway through, pushes reset . It plays out the same wedding scenario all over again, only with a different person — in this case, Jack — getting drugged. Yes, it’s one of those movies. But we haven’t had a good one in a while, and “Love Wedding Repeat” returns us to the fanciful confectionary ’90 vibe of “Sliding Doors” and “Serendipity” and “Run Lola Run,” in which tiny events set off erupting particle chains of fate. For a bit, the second scenario looks even more hapless than the first (it kicks off with Dina catching Jack in the men’s room in the most hilariously compromising of positions). But that’s all intentional. “Love Wedding Repeat” is about life’s way of snatching triumph from the jaws of desperation. It’s also about Jack learning not to be such a nice guy. When he finally casts off his straitjacket of exquisite British manners, you’ll want to applaud.

Reviewed online, April 8, 2020. MPAA Rating: Not rated. Running time: 100 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release of a Notorious Pictures, Tempo Productions production. Producers: Piers Tempest, Guglielmo Marchetti. Executive producers: Jo Bamford, Andrea Borella.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Dean Craig. Camera: Hubert Taczanowski. Editor: Christian Sandino-Taylor. Music: Timothy Mark Williams.  
• With: Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn, Freida Pinto, Eleanor Tomlinson, Joel Fry, Jack Farthing, Tim Key, Allan Mustafa, Aisling Bea, Paolo Mazzarelli.

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Review: Love Wedding Repeat is Flawed But Entertaining

Over the years, a lot of romantic comedies have been set around the premise of a wedding. It is the melting pot of all kinds of characters and allows to bring as much conflict into the fray as possible. The more the people, the worse things can get. And the protagonist of ‘Love Wedding Repeat’ finds himself tackling such a situation. In his sister’s wedding, he not just has to address the troubles from her side, but also has to come to terms with the problems that his own acquaintances bring to the table.

Love Wedding Repeat Plot

The film begins with Jack and Dina in Rome. They have been hanging out over the weekend, and now that it is time to part, Jack wants to express his feelings for her. Due to his bad luck and worse timing, he is unable to do so. Three years later, we find him back in Rome, this time for his sister’s wedding. Hayley is getting married to Roberto, and she is a bit worried. She passes on this tension to Jack by making him in charge of all the problems.

He comes to know that he has been seated at the same table where his ex, Amanda, is seated too. Both of them dislike each other very much. It is also brought to his attention that Dina, recently out of a relationship, is also here, and this might be Jack’s only chance to win over her. On top of this, Bryan, who is Hayley’s maid-of-honor, though he prefers man-of-honor, has not prepared his speech. And at last, there is the case of a distraught lover who wants to stop the wedding by professing his love for the bride.

Love Wedding Repeat Review

The film delivers a good number of laugh out loud moments, but there are also times when it becomes visibly bland. It doesn’t maintain the flow of humor throughout and often has to rely on the actors to perk up the scenes. To their credit, all of them rise to the occasion, at least as much as they are allowed.

All the running around can take a toll on anyone, and Sam Claflin brings out this exhaustion in Jack very well. He is weary of trying to keep up with the complications that don’t allow him enough room to breathe, but he is also hopeful of making good on the limited time that he has with Dina, for whom he feels a strong attraction. The majority of the film depends on Claflin to shoulder the soul of the story, and he certainly does his best.

There is no doubt about the fact that ‘Love Wedding Repeat’ brings together an incredible cast. Olivia Munn , Eleanor Tomlinson, Aisling Bea, and Frieda Pinto- all inhabit different personalities, their individual arcs adding more substance to the story, and them witnessing the development of their own by the end of the film. Jack Farthing brings to life the volatility of Marc, channeling his George Warleggan, of ‘ Poldark ’, to threaten the wedding into disarray.

One of the disappointments is not to see more of Bea, who puts a smile on your face every second that she appears on the screen. Bryan’s, played by Joel Fry, efforts to keep himself awake also deliver some of the funniest moments of the film. But even with them, the movie does go fall flat at times. Tauter writing would have brought it together better. In fact, and not to spoil anything, the funniest bits of the film are revealed at the end.

The idea of a time loop brings an exciting twist to the story. It delivers several versions of the same day, focusing on how a different stroke of chance can drastically change the outcome. If the fractions of different variants were put together to deliver a seamless day, then perhaps, this film would have turned out better, because, in its quest to present different scenarios, it doesn’t quite get any version entirely right.

Despite all its flaws, ‘Love Wedding Repeat’ succeeds to be an entertaining rom-com. It might not be the perfect escape, but it is a satisfactory respite in the times when people are forced to coop up inside their homes. It is beautiful to look at and leaves you with a good feeling by the end. What more can one want?

Rating: 3/5

Read More: Best Wedding Movies of All Time

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Movie Review – Love. Wedding. Repeat (2020)

April 13, 2020 by Matt Rodgers

Love. Wedding. Repeat , 2020.

Directed by Dean Craig Starring Sam Clafin, Olivia Munn, Freida Pinto, Eleanor Tomlinson, Joel Fry, Jack Farthing, Tim Key, Allan Mustafa, Aisling Bea, Paulo Mazzarelli, and Tiziano Caputo

Weddings are stressful at the best of times, but for Jack (Sam Clafin), his sisters wedding has a special set of ingredients: an angry ex-girlfriend, an uninvited guest, a missing sleep sedative, and a reunion with the one that got away (Olivia Munn).

There is a small subset of British rom-coms that go largely unnoticed upon release, only to be given this strange late-night terrestrial television afterlife, or create a digital repeat syndication appreciation society. Think wonderful Simon Pegg and Lake Bell London charmer Man Up , which made about 50p at the box-office, but is now considered an underrated gem. Or Rose Byrne and Rafe Spall in the refreshingly honest I Give It a Year , a wedding themed comedy that serves up its fair share of genre tropes, but does enough with them to make it well worth your time.

It’s hard to imagine Love. Wedding. Repeat receiving the same kind of goodwill longevity. In fact, you might struggle to get through even one sitting with this set of uniquely irritating characters and their rubbish Rashamon routine.

Adapted from the 2012 French comedy Plan de Table , it feels as though something has been lost in translation from the off, as we’re introduced to a zero-chemistry couple being thwarted from a first-kiss by a cruel twist of fate. This is the moment the movie is meant to hinge on: the star-crossed lovers that we’ll root for as a maelstrom of chaos swirls around them towards a happy-ending.

The problem is, that despite being played by Sam Clafin, who proved in Their Finest that charming leading man is well within his repertoire, and Office Christmas Party ’s comedy MVP Olivia Munn, their relationship is given no time develop into anything other than being two good-looking people who’re attracted to eachother. There’s no witty repartee between the two, no real flirting, no on-screen meet-cute, in fact everything that has developed between them took place before the movie had even started, which seems like it was when most people were at their happiest, including the audience.

Not to worry though, because sometimes it’s the guests who leave the most indelible mark at a wedding, rather than the main attraction, and Love. Wedding. Repeat has a cast that includes People Just Do Nothing ’s Alan Mustafa, Living With Yourself ’s Aisling Bea, Yesterday ’s Joe Fry, and the perennially funny Tim Key from This Time with Alan Partridge . Well, you know that recognisable sound of microphone feedback that’s often used for a joke falling flat in a packed auditorium? You can insert that here, because the paucity of laughs on offer throughout is shocking considering the talent involved.

An intoxicated maid-of-honour speech, and an inspired final scene piece of profanity are about the only times a guilty titter was offered up.

Admittedly there is a moment of intrigue when the narrator, referred to as ‘The Oracle’, suddenly turns the movie into a Sliding Doors narrative by introducing alternate timelines for events, but despite the best efforts of the cast, none of them prove to be any more interesting or funnier than what we were originally watching.

Deserving of a quick-fire divorce , Love. Wedding. Repeat is an entirely joyless affair, wasting a guest list of impressive actors with excruciating dialogue and sub-par levels of farce. Imagine watching the dullest wedding home-video of all time, and you’re not even half way there.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ / Movie ★

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‘love wedding repeat’: film review.

Sam Claflin and Olivia Munn star in Netflix's Rome-set rom-com 'Love Wedding Repeat,' about how the element of chance in alternate versions of the same nuptials rules another couple's union.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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The credited adaptation source for Love Wedding Repeat might be a minor French comedy from 2012 called Plan de table , but the model for this strained opera buffa is two Brit hits from the 1990s: Sliding Doors and Four Weddings and a Funeral . From the first comes the idea of parallel realities, their varying permutations dictated by chance; from the second, well, it’s right there in the new film’s title. Writer-director Dean Craig clearly worships at the altar of Richard Curtis, whose diluted DNA is all over Netflix ‘s rom-com about an obstacle course of ceremonial chaos along the path to blissful union.

Almost every character here can be mapped back to a counterpart in Curtis’ screenplay for Four Weddings , starting with Jack ( Sam Claflin ), an Englishman who keeps tripping up on his stammering charm, and the elusive American girl of his dreams, Dina ( Olivia Munn ). Claflin is agreeable enough, but he’s no Hugh Grant. His hair’s just not floppy enough, to begin with. On the plus side, Munn is no Andie MacDowell, either, so while she can’t do much with the contrived script and scene after scene of studied awkwardness, she at least has a certain relaxed luminosity. Unlike the majority of her fellow cast, she doesn’t try too hard.

Release date: Apr 10, 2020

Craig is a film and TV writer best known for the 2007 comedy Death at a Funeral , which again had a whiff of Curtis-lite, and his first feature directing gig doesn’t exactly display the lightest of touches.

Coronavirus lockdown is causing many of us to crave comfort viewing, and a ’90s throwback with attractive people struggling to unravel romantic entanglements in a gorgeous setting should be just the ticket. But there’s a difference between pleasing familiarity and derivative staleness. There’s just too little wit here amid all the cutesy misunderstandings and farcical mayhem to make Love Wedding Repeat anything but tedious froth. With Friends reruns now playing on a constant loop, audience time would be better spent revisiting “The One with Ross’s Wedding,” in terms of comedy covering similar territory.

In a brief prologue set against some cosmic screen-saver, a voice identified in the end credits as The Oracle (Penny Ryder, presumably because Judi Dench cost too much) reflects on the precariousness of love in a universe ruled by chaos and chance, “where all it takes is just one moment of ill fortune for all your hopes and dreams to go right down the shitter.” That kind of decorous vulgarity is a major component here, along with more puerile genital jokes than your average frat house.

The film proper opens with sumptuous postcard views of Rome in all its sun-kissed splendor, images that now bring a pang of melancholy as hard-hit Italy sits out the fifth week of its shutdown. Jack has been visiting his sister Hayley (Eleanor Tomlinson) in the Italian capital on the same weekend as her friend Dina, a journalist between assignments in “war-torn hellholes.” He’s instantly smitten and she appears to feel the same, but he summons the nerve to kiss her too late, and the moment is lost.

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Fast-forward three years to the same city on the day of Hayley’s wedding to Roberto (Tiziano Caputo), who is the sole Italian character of any significance, yet given zero personality. Guests converging on the magnificent old villa where the ceremony and reception are to take place naturally include Jack, who becomes a bundle of nerves once he discovers that due to a last-minute shift in her schedule, Dina will also be in attendance.

The title of the source material translates as “Seating Plan,” which sets up the multiple-outcome scenario thanks to some mischievous kids switching up the place cards at the table for English-speaking guests. So rather than avoiding his hostile ex Amanda ( Freida Pinto ), Jack gets stuck alongside her, while Dina is stranded next to Sidney (Tim Key), a thumping bore who is not Scottish but wears a kilt to allow for endless jokes about testicle discomfort. There’s also Hayley’s male “maid of honor,” Bryan (Joel Fry), an actor hoping to impress a star-making Italian director with a man bun (Paolo Mazzarelli); quirky Irish friend Rebecca (Aisling Bea); and Amanda’s barely tolerated new beau Chaz (Allan Mustafa).

The women generally are more memorable than the men, with some mild amusement generated by Pinto’s withering scorn and Bea’s salty irreverence. But all of them are types rather than interestingly developed characters, and only Dina has a shred of backstory. It’s even unclear what took Hayley to Rome, beyond this being an English-Italian co-production.

Tomlinson nonetheless emanates bridal radiance, and like Munn, makes for pleasurable company. But her ecstatic pronouncement, “Nothing could spoil this day,” is an instant cue for disaster. It arrives in the form of her cokehead ex Marc (Jack Farthing), who crashes the wedding, determined to convince Hayley she’s marrying the wrong guy. Early mentions of the knockout sleep meds Hayley has been taking to stay calm through the frenetic preparations are like Chekhov’s gun, and sure enough, a plan to silence loose-cannon Marc by drugging him goes badly awry. Jack is enlisted as chief troubleshooter.

The Sliding Doors effect hinges on the numerous different ways eight people can be arranged around a table, and how those switches variously impact the outcome of the day. Craig dispenses with most of them in a quick mid-film montage or over the end credits, dividing the majority of the action between one catastrophic series of events and another that goes right, culminating in Jack seizing his chance and making the inevitable mad dash across the cobblestones to declare his feelings. Spoiler alerts would be pointless since only someone who has never seen a rom-com won’t know what’s coming.

The lack of buoyancy or originality is somewhat ameliorated by the glossy visuals and pretty locations. But even the strenuous assist of pieces by Rossini, Mozart, Verdi, Bellini and Debussy can’t inject much class or authentic life into this artificial confection.

Production companies: Notorious Pictures, Tempo Productions Distributor: Netflix Cast: Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn, Eleanor Tomlinson, Freida Pinto, Joel Fry, Tim Key, Aisling Bea, Jack Farthing, Allan Mustafa, Paolo Mazzarelli, Tiziano Caputo, Penny Ryder Director-screenwriter: Dean Craig, based on the film Plan de Table , directed by Christelle Raynal and written by Francis Nief and Raynal Producers: Piers Tempest, Guglielmo Marchetti Executive producers: Jo Bamford, Andrea Borella Director of photography: Hubert Taczanowski Production designer: Alessandra Querzola Costume designer: Uliva Pizzetti Music: 14th Street Music Editor: Christian Sandino-Taylor Casting: Susanne Scheel

100 minutes

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