The Wedding Video

This homegrown romcom is pretty much doomed from the start. Once it’s apparent that we’re supposed to be watching the actual wedding video which beardy lad Raif (Rufus Hound) has shot for uptight sibling Tim (Robert Webb) as a nuptial gift, it’s clear the film will struggle to maintain that pretence. Moreover, since the bride-to-be is Saskia (Lucy Punch), the one-time sixth-form siren for whom Hound carried a blazing torch, the storyline is not exactly unguessable. Coming across like Simon Pegg during a bout of testosterone replacement therapy, Hound plays it far too full of himself. The assumption that we’re right behind him is way off the mark too. Yet despite everything else, director Nigel Cole (‘Made in Dagenham’) and the rest of his cast manage to create an improv-friendly jeu d’esprit with intermittent engaging larkiness in the margins, as hesitant bride Punch amusingly reconnects with her inner bad girl and Harriet Walter shines as her ultra-neurotic mum. This doesn’t turn a mediocre movie into a good one, but it makes the experience more personable in the meantime.