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Mary Fiore is a wedding planner. Her job is to plan the most opulent and ostentatious weddings imaginable and then oversee their executions with split-second precision. This involves not only picking out the flowers and
choreographing the wedding march but giving pep talks to various participants, including the lucky couple. When a bride stands backstage wondering if this is how she wants to spend the rest of her life, Mary calmly makes up a fib about something the groom supposedly said and then clinches the deal with "Not only is this marriage going to work, but it's going to last forever."

Mary's own love life isn't as successful. Her evening highlights include watching "Antique Roadshow," vacuuming her curtains, and playing Scrabble with her dad's friends. That is, until one fateful day when a Gucci shoe, a
manhole cover, and a stampeding bin of garbage all come together on a San Francisco street. Suddenly, Mary, the model of control and composure, needs a savior. Fortunately, Dr. Steve Edison is there in the nick of time. One
thing leads to another, and the two are soon enjoying an outdoor movie and a dance in the park, and Mary can't wipe the smile off her face. Can't, that is, until she finds out that Dr. Steve is already engaged and she's unwittingly signed up to plan his wedding. Oh, the clever narrative tricks of modern cinema. What will they regurgitate next?

This time around, it's Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey who are the star-crossed lovers separated by the cruel hand of fate. Dr. Steve (McConaughey, Contact) and Mary (Lopez, Out of Sight) do their best to antagonize each other for 30 minutes, then spend 30 minutes trying to avoid each other, and another 30 minutes contemplating how they can't live without each other, all while bride-to-be Fran (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras,
Love Stinks) doesn't have a clue.

How awful is The Wedding Planner? It's so inane that a statue's severed penis provides the introduction to one of the movie's special moments. It's so banal that the very sight of a man on a moped is supposed to be funny. It's so formulaic that the script's climax features Steve, who's finally realized what the audience figured out during the previews, making a madcap rush across town in the hopes of derailing Mary's wedding. Will he make it? Will he make it? I'd tell you, but I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise.

Of course, there are few surprises in this monotonous drivel. And it is monotonous. Almost every scene lasts twice as long as necessary, and I routinely found myself contemplating the rest of the day's activities as I waited for each boring conversation to reach its predictable conclusion. Director Adam Shankman said that he was drawn to the script because it reminded him of, and I quote, "old movie classics starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant." Only the braindead would compare the phlegmatic Wedding Planner to the razor-sharp His Girl Friday. The two are akin to matter and anti-matter.

I should point out that the three women in front of me (women outnumbered men by a ratio of at least 10 to 1 in the matinee I attended) seemed to be having a marvelous time. They laughed at a lot of the gags, they flashed each other knowing smiles, and they sighed with delight whenever McConaughey flashed a smile of his own. Even I have to admit that McConaughey is a lot of fun in this film. Charm oozes from every pore of his body, and he has a fabulously relaxed screen presence. And on top of it all, he's wearing these "cute little glasses." At least that's what did it for a certain female friend of mine.

The same cannot be said of Jennifer Lopez. Instead of the fantastic energy she exuded in Out of Sight, here she seems straitjacketed by her ever-present pastel pant suits. True, her character is supposed to be largely passionless, but did it have to be so dull?

Of all the movie's sins, though, the greatest might be the utter futility of its secondary characters. There's not an interesting one in the bunch, and most are pathetic. Mary's father and supposed fiance (don't ask) are particularly cringe-inducing with their ever-varying Italian accents and ethnic stereotypes writ large. In the end, Mary's prediction is half-right. The movie may not have worked, but it sure felt like it lasted forever.

J. Robert Parks 1/29/2001