Wedding Belles

Wedding Belles was a breath of fresh air to British TV. The acting was outstanding with an exceptional performance from Shirley Henderson. The screen play was well written and extremely funny, with the actors executing the lines with perfect timing.

Welsh's cameo was amusing as his cameos usually are. The story is typical of welsh and I am sure people will be offended by his unrelenting honesty and attention to actual life he puts into all his work.

What is it about and who will like it? Fans of train spotting will enjoy the comedy and drama, it is not as controversial as the Acid House but still has the gritty sense of life in parts of Edinburgh, the comedy is the strongest and most important and entertaining part of this little drama.

The story is about the relationships between four female friends that have grown up in the east of Edinburgh, it takes place in the lead up to Amanda's wedding, a few secrets are revealed along the way. It is an amusing piece of entertainment.

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.

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.

Sorry, but I must disagree with the earlier rave reviews. I find that raunchy humor and dark humor aren't the same thing. Overall this film was just raunchy. The only consistent theme through the film was the hate Rhona, Shaz etc. had for men who had hurt them emotionally. If the women's roles were transposed with men's roles & vice versa, the film would never have been made. It would have been greeted with howls of execration.

Looking into the lives of what Americans call 'white trash' isn't particularly entertaining. If the story had an underlying theme that challenged the imagination and intellect, I would have stayed interested. But it didn't. I thought it was just an overlong collection of randy skits.

If this is called 'Scottish drama', then what on earth can we learn about Scotland from it? Yikes!