Confetti film review

certificate_15

CONFETTI

A bright and breezy British comedy which is frequently very amusing, Confetti borrows from the mockumentary style developed by Christopher Guest (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman), but actually manages to be a lot funnier than his last effort A Mighty Wind. It also benefits from using a cast largely familiar from recent TV comedies, who all make an impressive leap on to the big screen.

Writer/director Debbie Isitt shows great confidence in a genre that could so easily provide plenty of pitfalls. This is sharp, well-observed and infectious stuff which surprisingly pulls at the heartstrings and deserves to be a commercial success.

It's a relatively simple plot that is explained very quickly at the beginning: the owner of Confetti magazine (an obnoxious Jimmy Carr) decides on a competition to find the Most Original Wedding of the Year. He and his editor (Felicity Montagu, best known as Alan Partridge's long-suffering assistant Lynn) choose the three couples who will contest the final and the rest of the film charts their progress as they attempt to win their dream marriage.

Couple one (Martin Freeman and Jessica Stevenson) are intent on an old-fashioned musical wedding, despite the fact that neither of them show much prowess in that department. Couple two (Stephen Mangan and Meredith Macneill) are competitive tennis freaks who insist on a centre court wedding (complete with Cliff Richard lookalike). Finally, Robert Webb and Olivia Colman (two of the stars of the excellent Peep Show) play a pair of naturists, and bravely wander around for ninety minutes in the buff.

Most of the preparations for the weddings prove to be very funny, but best of all are the two wedding organisers Heron and Hough (Vincent Franklin and Jason Watkins). A camp postmodern Gilbert and George, they are the comedic highlight of the affair and hold it all together, without diminishing the impact of the main three couples.

Confetti won't change the world, and doesn't even have a big message to make. It sets out to entertain, and more than does so. It looks like it was a lot of fun to make, and it's certainly a lot of fun to watch.

Paul Hurley