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Confetti (2006)

Director: Debbie Isitt

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From Time Out London

It’s no surprise that tournaments and competitions have proven fertile ground for documentary-makers in recent years: not only do they offer a predictable, ready-made dramatic structure of a kind rarely found in everyday life, they’re also guaranteed to provoke extreme emotion, as the junior wordsmiths of ‘Spellbound’, disabled athletes of ‘Murderball’ and even the prospective whistling champs of recent festival hit ‘Pucker Up’ have shown.

Zeroing in on three couples participating in a bridal magazine’s competition to find the most original wedding of the year, ‘Confetti’ aims to combine the semi-improvised spoof doc reality laffs of Christopher Guest’s ‘Best In Show’ with the aww-appeal of the stilted, cringe-making but essentially romantic pre-nuptial sphere that Richard Curtis has almost single-handedly turned into international shorthand for contemporary Englishness.

And to a large degree it succeeds. Debbie Isitt’s cast is a who’s who of young British TV comedy talent, all doing what they do best: Martin Freeman and Jessica Stevenson are the nice, everyday couple mounting a Hollywood musical wedding with dubious help from her stage mum, Alison Steadman; Stephen Mangan and Meredith MacNeill are the obnoxiously arrogant, insecurely friendless go-getters with a vintage tennis theme; and the naturist couple tying the knot au naturel are played by Olivia Colman and every single bit of Robert Webb.

Somewhat broader and not quite as sharp as Guest at his best, this still offers plenty of sharp-eyed character humour and, crucially, develops each of its couples as credible relationships – of which the gay wedding planners (Vincent Franklin and Jason Watkins) are by some way the most functional and mature.

Author: Ben Walters 2006-05-02 09:49:05

Time Out London Issue 1863: May 3-10 2006