Wedding Belles

It's unfortunate that this programme's IMDb rating has been dragged down by one person who just plain didn't like it. Note that *every* other reviewer has given it a 10...and how often does that happen? From the fantastic, surreal opening sequence to the close, this is simply British TV drama at its best. Hilarious yes, as others have noted, but also one of the most moving portraits of friendship I can remember seeing. The script is razor sharp, every performance flawless, the direction superb. Not a dull moment from start to finish. This one is going to *rack* up the awards. The only problem I can see from an American's perspective is the accents - Glaswegian you could cut with a Stanley knife. My guess is it'll get subtitles when it hits HBO, as it surely must. Irvine Welsh - maestro! Dennis Potter couldn't have done it better...and praise comes no higher than that.

It is a week to go till Amanda's wedding and the plans are going well. The lives of her friends are not looking as rosy as hers though. Rhona has turned to drugs and longs for suicide to be reunited with her dead fiancé. Shaz is having an affair with a priest and Kelly has cancer on top of still suffering with scars from her childhood. The four friends revolve around each other as the week that should be progressing towards happiness and love, becomes one of revenge and violence.

Let's just get this over with. There is no real need to read on, my summary line has already told you I didn't like the film and in case you missed it, I did think the film was a terribly pointless mess. There. Now, given the gushing praise for this film on this site and the fact that any even semi-negative review is voted "not useful", I imagine you the reader will have already have voted me useless (or in your parlance - "wrong") because I disagree with your views on this title. A shame that you will never ask me why I think this or just tell me you disagree but here we are. Anyway, by now the few readers this review will get either agree with me or are actually interested in the opinions of others, whether they differ or not. So my next problem is where to start with this.

Opening with four women in wedding dresses firing bullets into the men who have hurt them somehow, you could be forgiven from thinking that, when we jump to a week before, that the narrative would lead us to this point and explain the whys to us. In one way the film does move towards this point but only because the flow of time is linear. In terms of development of the story though, most of the film is really spent going nowhere. Mostly we hang around with the characters in various situations and it is only in the final third that suddenly motivations for the various acts of revenge are revealed – and they almost all come out of nowhere. To fill the time what we are left with are various "shocking" or comic moments that include a woman dressed as a nun masturbating an old man (who incidentally needed finishing off because the woman stopped him having sex with a dead woman in fishnets); a woman snorting the ashes of a dead dog; an incident with a man raped by a dog and of course endless swearing.

Now my main problem with this was that there was no story to support any of it and indeed even the ending chickens out of everything, suddenly going a bit sentimental and ending in a soft and unsatisfying fashion. Reading the reviews here, it does appear I'm missing the point by looking for a story or characters because according to those that love it, the film is actually a dark comedy. I have seen things that are outrageous and funny (Mel Brooks in his heyday comes to mind) but this is just outrageous. For some viewers this will be enough because they will call it "cult" and embrace it as edgy and darkly comic but from my point of view, the writers have just stuck lots of "gross-out" moments in there, written the C word lots and hoped that the "cult" appeal Welsh gained from Trainspotting will be enough to prevent anyone spotting the total lack of substance or genuine humour (dark or otherwise).

It is a terrible shame in some regards because there are real moments here and there in the characters – but they are few and far between. This wastes the actresses in stupid, foul-mouthed cardboard cut-out characters. Gomez is wasted. She has a good body and can swear like a trooper but there is nothing else for her to work with. Macdonald overacts in her simplistic addict role. Henderson has nothing to do but squeak around for so long that when she does eventually have a touching moment, it is devalued by everything that had gone before. McDermott is goodlooking and natural throughout – a waste that her material is just plain weak.

Overall then a mostly pointless and puerile affair that trades off shock value in place of substance – hoping that viewers will just call it "cult" and lap it up. You're not "wrong" if you loved it, it just means you fall within Welsh's target group. The good news is that that group is small.

For anyone who likes their films hard and fast and hilarious and sexy and rock n rolling, well look no further. Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh have turned in an amazing script that is taken to another level with magical direction by Philip John and outstanding performances from Gomez, Henderson, McDermott and McDonald. It quite literally burns off of the screen. The soundtrack is awesome.

I'd be astounded if Wedding Belles didn't become a series. There has been talk of it in the media but no news as yet. Wedding Belles blows the usual rubbish like Skins and Goldplated and Shameless out of the water. It was a genuine joy to see something so original and exciting coming out of the UK.

I hope the BAFTA judges watched it because Henderson and Gomez deserve best TV actresses by a long mile.

Before starting the review I must say that if you are offended by swearing, drug use, necrophilia, violence, references to bestiality, more swearing, a priest receiving oral sex from a woman dressed as a nun, the use of derogatory terms for people suffering from mental illness or even more swearing then this probably isn't the film for you, if however you aren't easily offended and you like your comedy fairly dark then you may love this, I know I did.

Having enjoyed "Trainspotting" when I saw adverts for a new television film written by Irvine Welsh I just had to see it and when I did see it I enjoyed it so much I had to get the DVD as soon as it was released. Unlike his earlier film this film follows the lives of four women, the men in it are distinctly secondary characters. It opens with a bang as four women dressed in bridal gowns go to a grave yard and dig up a corpse before rounding up a teenage joy-rider, a Catholic priest and a Welshman who the take to a canal-side and shoot each of them. We then go back a week and see the events that lead up to these four women wanting to kill these four men.

Amanda, played by Michelle Gomez is looking forward to marrying her fiancé, a Welsh pilot who appears to have no major vices. Kelly, played by the excellent Shirley Henderson, is helping Amanda by doing her community service punishment for her at the local mental hospital, unfortunately Kelly isn't a hairdresser like Amanda so her attempts at cutting a patient's hair go disastrously wrong. Rhona, played by Shauna Macdonald, is having problems at her job in an old people's home after supplying an elderly gentleman with Viagra and is having an affair with a Catholic priest. Finally there is Shaz, played by Kathleen McDermott, who has turned to drugs following the death of her fiancé in a crash caused by a joy-rider.

The earlier part of the film is laugh out loud funny in particular the scene at the "saints and sinners" fancy dress party where Kelly is dressed as a Nazi and Rhona beats the living daylights out of a man while dressed as a nun. The comedy is however tinged with tragedy and by the end when we learnt Kelly's story I was almost in tears. I've avoided mentioning the funniest scenes as I'd hate to spoil the "I can't believe they did that" reactions they may cause.

If you liked "Trainspotting" I'd recommend this while I don't think the writing was as sharp here it is still great film with more laughs than his earlier work. The acting from the four leading ladies is very good, I particularly liked Shirley Henderson in her role as Kelly, but then she is always good.

Funny, sad, sexy and scathing. Quite simply an amazing achievement. After being subjected to second rate pedestrian period drama's and lacklustre so called "contemporary" drivel from British TV over the last few years, "Wedding Belles" shot out of the left field and gave me hope in the future of UK broadcasting.

Besides the beautiful photography, the rip roaring soundtrack, the "not an ounce of fat" editing and of course the fantastic chemistry of the cast, here was a script that nailed its mission statement on the mast from the get-go. It went where asbestos booted angels fear to tread.

The whole film felt and looked "authored", something we very rarely - if ever- see from UK productions nowadays. Dean Cavanagh and Irvine Welsh were obviously left to really take their imaginations into overdrive. What we ended up with was "hyper reality" but reality all the same. For all the shocking scenes they never once took us so far away from a veracity.

Being an exiled American I did have a problem understanding the accents and watched with subtitles. This didn't detract from the sheer joy it, in fact, imagining the subtitlers translating it just added to the humour for me.

I watch most of my TV on boxsets and I'd love to see a season of "Wedding Belles". It made me want to visit Edinburgh week in week out and catch up with these larger than life characters.

Truly an outstanding piece of TV worthy of awards.