Wedding Rehearsal

Although the basic plot is straight out of P. G. Wodehouse -- wealthy relative threatens to cut off playboy's allowance if he doesn't get married to one of the "acceptable" girls on her list, so he sets out to preemptively marry them off to someone else -- along with its leisurely pacing, "Wedding Rehearsal" is something of a hit-and-miss affair. This is more a pleasant comedy of manners in the British mode, with a dollop of social commentary, than a romantic farce. If you approach it as such, it has its small rewards, some nice comic characterizations and occasionally witty dialog.

You certainly can't fault the quality of the actors, or the production values, not to mention the location shots of London in the early 30s. There are some great moments, such as when the dowager steels herself to give her twin daughters the "what to expect on your wedding night" speech on the eve of their double wedding, while the twins try their best to look innocent.

I wouldn't recommend "Wedding Rehearsal" to most modern viewers, but if you're a fan of actors like Roland Young and Merle Oberon, and like that between-the-wars British aristocratic milieu, you might find yourself enjoying the film. I did.

I was not charmed by this. I was bored by this.

A rich fellow must find a wife or lose his allowance.

This is a film from 1930, and while there are good films from 1930, this would not be one of them. The acting is odd, the lines are stilted, there are long pauses during which I kept expecting the director to shout "cut!" Comedy depends upon.

Timing.

More than anything else, that is what romantic comedy is, and this amateurish, dated thing is lurching in its timing. Four years later, It Happened One Night was filmed, so either someone figured out how to deliver, direct, and edit snappy dialog in just four years, or they knew before (my suspicion) and this movie is simply inept.

Roland Young is the Marquis of Buckminster. He enjoys his bachelorhood. He's also dependent on the largess of his aunt -- I imagine he doesn't collect much rent on the palace. She insists he get married, and from a very short list of high-born ladies. Discussing this problem with two of the ladies he's actually friends with, twins Wendy Barrie and Joan Gardner, Young discovers they're engaged to two commoners who lack noble ancestors, and of whom their families heartily disapprove: John Loder and Maurice Evans, who rejoice in the names of "Bimbo" and "Tootles." He figures that if he can get all the eligible young women married, he's safe for another twenty years, and decides to start with these two.

It's an amusing P. G. Wodehouse sort of story, although it lacks the hilarious imbecility of the Master. Young is fine as the diffident, aging youth, and the cast is nicely filled out Merle Oberon as the unrealized object of his affection, George Grossmith, Lady Tree and Diane Napier.

Minor London Films comedy, chiefly interesting now because of the number of British actors it features who later went on to greater things. The plot concerns the Marquis of Buckminster (Roland Young), who must marry or be cut out of a rich relative's will. Instead he sets about marrying off all his friends to the eligible girls on his relative's hit-list in an attempt to save himself from such a ghastly fate. Only as the moon sets on the day of his friends' weddings does he finally find himself smitten...

Not as witty nor as farcical as it pretends to be, Young (later Mr Topper) gives a marvellous performance that makes it sort of worthwhile. Other notables include John Loder, Wendy Barrie (of The Saint, Falcon and Sherlock Holmes films), Joan Gardner (later Mrs Zoltan Korda), Maurice Evans (later Dr Zaius in Planet of the Apes) and a stunning Merle Oberon. Something perhaps for an older generation - or those deeply in love with early cinema - to savour, but an acquired taste for everybody else.

Roland Young stars in "Wedding Rehearsal," a 1932 British film with Wendy Barrie, Joan Gardner, and Merle Oberon. Young plays the Marquis of Buckminster who has to get married or get cut out of a will which would enable him to inherit quite a lot of money. Plus, his mother wants grandchildren. She gives him a list of suitable women, and the Marquis manages to get them married off so he doesn't have to marry one of them himself. Then he realizes he's in love with someone who didn't make the list.

Several of these actors went to Hollywood - most notably, Roland Young, Wendy Barrie, and Merle Oberon. Oberon is gorgeous and hardly in the film. Barrie and Gardner play twins Lady Mary Rose and Lady Rose Mary. Gardner was married to Alexander Korda's brother Zoltan until his death in 1961; she eventually retired to raise a family.

This is a charming film, very light, with a sweet ending. It doesn't have a lot of substance, though, and it drags. Still, it has its charms.