Joel Fry-days: Love Wedding Repeat (2020, TV-MA)

I went into this one with much trepidation. I always liked Sam Claflin in the Hunger Games franchise (Finnick!), and a certain plot device revealed in the trailer had me clinging to a faint hope that maybe this would be the wedding-movie equivalent to Death at a Funeral, a film I thought was hilarious. But it really didn’t look good. And, well? I’d say the end result is an exercise in wasted potential.

Jack’s number-one job on his sister Hayley’s wedding day is to make sure everything goes perfectly for her, and if he has a chance to make up for lost time with the one who got away, all the better. Unfortunately, a major wildcard has just shown up in the form of Hayley’s coked-up ex, who crashes the reception determined to win her back. Hayley enlists Jack’s help in an incredibly bad idea: neutralizing her ex by spiking his champagne with sleeping drugs. Against his better judgment, Jack reluctantly agrees to the plan, not realizing a group of kids are about to run around switching all the name cards at that table.

The central hook of the movie, hammered home by a wise old unseen narrator, is that love is at the mercy of the whims of chance. The rearranged seating opens up multiple outcomes for this farcical question of who will end up drinking the drugged champagne. Done well, this could’ve gone the route of the iconic Community episode “Remedial Chaos Theory,” giving us a multiple-timelines comedy where part of the fun is seeing how small changes ripple out and affect the unfolding events. Instead, we finish the first outcome around the 50-minute mark, do a quick rewind, speedrun through a montage of other possibilities, then stick with a second main scenario until the end of the film.

So the film doesn’t use its premise all that well, and it doesn’t do much better by its characters. Despite a talented cast, there isn’t much for them to get off the ground in this flimsy, cliche-ridden story. Jack is a wet blanket of a protagonist, and while Sam Claflin does get to show off a bit of entertaining physical comedy, his charm is wasted here. We’re not really shown a compelling reason to root for Jack and Olivia Munn’s Dina to get together. Jack’s devotion to his sister is lovely, but Hayley has been a major contributor to her own prospective downfall here. Although I like Freida Pinto, she’s given hardly anything to do as Jack’s chilly ex Amanda. As friend/guest Rebecca, Aisling Bea, who appeared in the Doctor Who New Year’s special “Eve of the Daleks,” is saddled with a lot of belabored humor early on, but in the second half, things turned around for her somewhat.

Side note: part of the conceit here is that the groom is Italian and the wedding is in Rome, so there’s only one “English table” at the reception, which is how we end up with awkward arrangements like Jack sitting next to his ex. But regardless, this whole friend group dynamic is very confusing. It’s unclear how all of these people fit together and wound up being the sole wedding guests on Hayley’s side.

All right, onto Joel Fry! He plays Bryan, Hayley’s maid of honor (he wants to go by “man of honor,” she won’t let him.) While a lot of the ensemble is given just one or two character aspects to focus on—i.e. Rebecca is annoyingly chatty and obsessed with Bryan, Amanda’s current boyfriend is intensely jealous of Jack—Bryan has a lot going on. He wants to be there for Hayley but is still hung up on the “maid of honor” thing, and he somehow made it until the wedding day without realizing he’s supposed to give a toast at the reception. He’s an actor who’s determined to make a good impression on a famous Italian director who’s also a guest at the wedding (?), and he focuses on that to the point of neglecting his maid-of-honor duties. He’s dreading having to spend the reception with Rebecca “clinging” to him and begs Jack not to leave him alone with her.

That’s maybe too much going on for a supporting character, and not all of it necessarily holds together. In the second half of the film, Bryan describes himself as “a totally self-obsessed, neurotic mess,” which kind of covers it, but beyond all that, he’s also slotted into being whatever the film needs him to be. Early in the film, he proves unreliable as he’s overly focused on this director over Hayley’s actual wedding, but later on, he’s shown to be a pretty supportive friend to Jack. It’s not entirely clear what prompts the round of self-reflection that gets him to the “self-obsessed, neurotic mess” revelation, and he manages to deliver, not one, but two load-bearing romantic speeches at critical points in the movie.

But my god, if Joel Fry doesn’t do his best to sell the hell out of it. While I wouldn’t say he saves the movie or anything, I enjoy watching Bryan the entire time he’s onscreen. Fry’s comedic physicality is used to really good effect, he somehow brings complete sincerity to bullshit lines, and as he juggles Bryan’s selfishness, insecurity, supportiveness, and more, he kind of makes it all feel like it works.

And okay, here’s the thing about actors I like in bad movies. As I’ve said before, every actor has some clunkers in their filmography, that’s just part of the business. Maybe things didn’t pan out creatively, maybe there was meddling that messed with the end result, maybe bills just needed to be paid. Either way, every actor has been in bad movies. Sometimes in these instances, there’s nothing for them to salvage or they can’t rise above the lackluster material. At others, their role is so minor that I just sort of tune out until their scenes come along. And at others, they give it their all and become the best thing about a bad movie. 

I’ve definitely been impressed by the latter situation before—like, Peter Dinklage is genuinely fantastic in Tiptoes, and Tiptoes is such a terrible film. It’s a major testament to their skills when they can pull off something like that, and it’s always neat to see. On a personal level, though, it can be weirdly frustrating too. What I mean is, if I’m watching a bad movie for a particular actor and their performance isn’t very good or there’s not enough of them to make it worthwhile, whatever. I write off the time I spent watching that film, check it off my list, and maybe grumble at them being wasted in it. And that’s all—I’m done with that movie and won’t ever give it much thought again. But when an actor I like is good in a bad film, as much as it impresses me, there’s this weird little part of my brain that goes, “Aw dammit, are you really making me like this stupid movie? Am I gonna have to watch this again because I like you so much in it?”

That’s kind of what’s going on here. I know this isn’t a good movie, but when Fry is onscreen, he kind of makes me like it anyway. If the script weren’t so lazy and unfocused, this could’ve been great.

Second side note: again, there’s no real explanation for his shift in perspective, but I do like seeing Bryan come through for Jack as a friend in the later part of the movie. Bryan winds up doing quite a bit for Jack, even if he has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the worst of it. However, as much as I honestly enjoy that aspect of the film, I wish we could’ve seen a little more of Bryan’s friendship with Hayley. We basically get two brief snippets where we see the level of affection he has for her, but for much of the film, he feels more like Jack’s friend than hers. A trio-type situation where he’s best friends with both of them would be fine, I just want to be able to see it—while I like that Bryan is Hayley’s maid of honor, I wanted to get more of their friendship to know why he’s her maid of honor.

Accent Watch

Southern British English.

Recommend?

In General – Nah, too much wasted potential.

Joel Fry – Dammit, I might! I think it’s worth watching once, at least to see him.

Warnings

Thematic elements (including a comedy of errors about accidental drugging,) language, sexual references, drinking/drug use, and brief comedic violence.

Joel Fry-days / Other Doctor Lives: 96 Ways to Say I Love You (2015)

Joel Fry has been in quite a few shorts, and as I’ve learned from many an actor deep-dive, shorts can be elusive sometimes. But lucky for me, a lot of his are available online—good old Vimeo! And 96 Ways to Say I Love You is a project that doubles as an Other Doctor Lives piece, since it also features David Tennant.

Olive and Al are both nervously preparing to say “I love you.” Their friends think they’re crazy and “cringe,” but they don’t care. In between their story, we see several When Harry Met Sally-style interviews with different couples, talking about their own experience with the phrase.

For a 10-minute short, we get a nice assortment of characters, and we’re given a pretty decent idea of who most of them are. With the interviews, we see several interactions with two different couples (plus one widow,) painting a picture of each relationship. There’s a definite mix of positive and negative—no one’s completely hopeless, and no one’s idealistically perfect, either.

Georgia Tennant is super cute as Olive. A hopeless romantic in a cynical world, she’s bubbly and dreamy-eyed. And although she’s nervous about saying “I love you,” she has no room for cynicism. When a friend warns, “What if he doesn’t say it back?”, Olive says, “I don’t know. Fuck it, life’s too short! I’ve gotta get it out!”

We’ll go to Joel Fry next, since he plays Al. He’s even more nervous about the whole “I love you” thing than Olive, adorably anxious as he psychs himself up. He tries smiling in the mirror while he brushes his teeth, then lets out a groan of existential dread. He practices his speech, jittery, and laments, “God, I just sound like a Richard Curtis fucktard!” The man is stressed. Al has a cynical friend too, one who thinks he’s making a huge mistake and warns, “She’s gonna throw up all over your face.” But despite how anxious he is, Al insists, “I’m still gonna do it.”

Such a sweet disaster of a character! Fry’s physicality here makes me think of Frenchie—Al has the same sense of “arms and elbows everywhere,” and he fiddles with his hair when his hands need something to do. At this point, I’m guessing some of these mannerisms are Fry’s own body language, and they’re his go-tos when he needs to show one of his characters is uncomfortable, thinking, or anxious. Either way, I still love it.

This is of course a White Van Man reunion for Joel Fry and Georgia Tennant, both playing very counter to their characters on that show. Al and Olive are completely un-Darren-like and un-Emma-like, which probably made for a fun experience working together again.

David Tennant plays Mark. He and Lily, his partner of four years, are being interviewed, and let’s just say Mark isn’t nailing it. On some levels, he tries too hard, beginning with the faux-philosophical factoid, “You know, in Sanskrit, they have 96 words for [love], and all we can say is three.” When Lily points out that he’s said something problematic, he urgently whispers, “I wasn’t being racist!” before repeating it, louder, for the interviewer. And he really wants it known that they slept together before either of them said “I love you.” In short, he’s an insecure man who’s desperately trying to project confidence, and David Tennant isn’t afraid to really lean into the discomfort in these scenes.

Side note: as I was writing this, I realized that every actor in this short who’s familiar to me has been on Doctor Who. David Tennant, obviously, was both the Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors. Georgia Tennant played Jenny in “The Doctor’s Daughter.” Olive’s friend is played by Ingrid Oliver, a.k.a. Osgood from UNIT. Nina Sosanya (Lily) was in the series 2 episode “Fear Her.” And although this short predates it by nearly ten years, Joel Fry went on to appear in the 2024 Christmas special “Joy to the World.” Even considering the small world of the U.K. acting industry, that’s pretty wild!

Accent Watch

Joel Fry – Southern British English, I think.

David Tennant – Scottish.

Recommend?

In General – Yes! It’s funny and sweet, and it’s only ten minutes long. Just go for it!

Joel Fry – I would. I love Al, he’s such a delightful mess!

David Tennant – I think so. Mark certainly isn’t a likable character, but Tennant plays him so well.

Warnings

Language, sexual references, and drinking. 

Other Doctor Lives: Kiss Me, Kate (2025)

This West End production of Kiss Me, Kate was another of the recordings PBS aired for Great Performances this spring. Understandably, Next to Normal remains first in my heart, but this was a fun production too. Stephanie J. Block never disappoints, and ever since the fantastic Midsummer Night’s Dream he was in, I’m always excited when I see Hammed Animashaun pop up in something. And it was a pleasant surprise to discover that this is also an Other Doctor Lives project, thanks to an appearance from Peter Davison in a supporting role!

Bitter exes Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi are starring together in a new musical production of The Taming of the Shrew. On their opening night, backstage misunderstandings and grievances spill out onto their onstage performances. Throw in some gambling debts, a young couple with differing views on fidelity, and a pair of threatening gangsters, and you have the makings of a farce.

While Kiss Me, Kate isn’t a top-tier musical for me, I’ve always enjoyed the show. Cole Porter’s score is packed with clever, naughty lyrics, and there are so many crowd-pleaser numbers. In this production, the usual suspects brought the house down: the spectacular dancing in “Too Darn Hot,” the joyous promiscuity of “Always True to You (in My Fashion),” and of course the uproarious “Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” especially as it gets into repeated refrains and the gangsters demand audience participation.

I do think it’s a show that works a little better in person, because when you’re in the room feeling the energy of the actors, it feeds the comedy and heightens the whole experience. In the recording, I can hear that the audience is absolutely rolling at the gangsters’ antics, Fred and Lilli’s onstage sparring, and so on. But even from a slight distance on the other side of my screen, there’s still plenty to enjoy.

Stephanie J. Block is a terrific Lilli, a strong-willed diva whose vulnerabilities are closer to the surface than she’d like to admit. She’s funny, she’s in excellent voice, and she has great combative chemistry with Adrian Dunbar’s Fred. I enjoy Charlie Stemp and Georgina Oruorah as Bill and Lois—Oruorah brings the house down with her delightful “Always True to You (in My Fashion.)” I of course knew that Hammed Animashaun was going to be a hoot, and he and Nigel Lindsay do a bang-up job as the two gangsters. Their scenes consistently had me grinning. Additional shoutout to Jack Butterworth as Paul. I’ve always loved “Too Darn Hot,” and he leads the dance fantastically.

Peter Davison plays Gen. Harrison Powell, Lilli’s new guy. He doesn’t show up until the second act, although we see Lilli’s phone calls with him in Act I. Harrison arrives at the theatre after Lilli has reached her limit with Fred, dramatically announcing her intention to quit the show and begging Harrison to come take her away. The main joke here is that Harrison is old and stodgy, a terrible fit for Lilli. “I can see why she fell for you,” Fred quips. “You look exactly like her grandpa.” While Lilli argues that she can depend on Harrison, Fred insists that she’ll never be satisfied with a quiet life away from the stage.

It’s a small role without much meat to it, but Davison is still enjoyable. He does a nice job playing baffled and suspicious of the theatrical antics, as well as oblivious to Lilli’s growing hesitation. My favorite bit comes when Lilli’s trying to convince him that the gangsters are forcing her to stay in the show at gunpoint. “But Harrison, I could get killed!” she insists. Aggressively American Military Man Harrison assures her, “Guns don’t kill people,” and right on cue, the gangsters pipe up, “We do!”

Accent Watch

A pretty broad American, vaguely Southern.

Recommend?

In General – I think I would. This is a fun production!

Peter Davison – I wouldn’t call it a must—Davison’s role is too small for that—but if you have any general interest in watching the show, his presence adds to it.

Warnings

A metric ton of sex jokes and innuendo, language, allusions to violence, and thematic elements.