Confetti

Three young couples vie to win a magazine contest by holding their 'themed' weddings in public, with the winners being awarded a first prize of a brand new home. Step forward the three couples: nudists Michael and Joanna; tennis-mad Josef and Meredith, and Hollywood musical fans Matt and Samantha.

The fun comes for us as as viewers as we join the fly-on the wall documentary team that follows all three couples as the wedding organisers and their respective families try to get the weddings together in time for the contest.

This is a showcase of modern British comedy talent. Jimmy Carr, Felicity Montagu, Stephen Mangan, Martin Freeman, Jessica Stevenson and Alison Steadman all do their bit. But the real stars are the lesser known Vincent Franklin and Jason Watkins as the camp wedding organisers who won't let anything get in the way of the couples' dream day.

This is an enjoyable little film, with a nice basic idea, littered with lots of good performances. It is 'smile' humour, rather than 'laugh out loud' stuff. But the smiles are here a-plenty. It is also surprisingly moving at times as well, and refreshingly free of cynicism. If at times you doubt the sincerity of some of those involved, the ending leaves you on a high.

'Confetti' is not brilliant or ground-breaking, but it will make you smile. And that's not such a bad recommendation, is it?

A highly entertaining and original comedy using the cream of British comedy acting talent, who spent weeks improvising before arriving at the final script.

At times the writer/director Debbie Isitt doesn't seem sure whether to make her characters comic or endearing, but usually succeeds in doing both.

The 'Tennis Match' wedding is very funny, while the cast of non-dancers failing to achieve perfect symmetry in the Busby Berkeley sequence adds to the general hilarity.

Martin Freeman gets better with each role, Alison Steadman turns in her usual immaculate performance, with Jimmy Carr making the most of his first big screen role. Look out for the spectacularly camp wedding planners, who nearly steal the show from bigger names.

If you liked 'The Office' and 'Shaun of the Dead' you'll love this.

There are few things so stressful in life as planning and executing a wedding. When that morass of charged emotions runs headlong into a contest held by Confetti Magazine for the "most original wedding," things are bound to get messy.

Three couples are chosen for their unique wedding ideas: Matt (Martin Freeman) and Sam (Jessica Stevenson) want a Hollywood musical style, Josef (Stephen Mangan) and Isabelle (Meredith MacNeill) vie for a tennis theme, while Michael (Robert Webb) and Joanna (Olivia Colman) are "naturalists" and want their nuptials to be done in the nude. Trying to wrangle these three disparate couples into some kind of order are wedding planners Archie Heron (Vincent Franklin) and Gregory Hough (Jason Watkins) who seem to be channeling Corky St. Clair...

In fact, shot as a documentary, this British ensemble piece is sure to be (justly) compared to Christopher Guest's mockumentaries (WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, A MIGHTY WIND, et cetera). Director Debbie Isitt does a fair job of aping Guest though she doesn't know when to go from documentary hand-held to a smoother choreographed camera and relies too much on non-diegetic music.

Clearly, too, Isitt is aware of the weaknesses to the storyline. Two of the three couples are off screen for long stretches and our "villainous" couple (think Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock from BEST IN SHOW) is mishandled in the finale. Even when they're not working with the best material (how many jokes about a nudist wedding can there be?) the cast does a terrific job keeping the film afloat. Besotted with faces familiar to anglophile TV/film viewers, CONFETTI is an amusing farce.

I was expecting this to be fairly decent as I've seen virtually all of the actors in other comedies, but after watching it I certainly wouldn't want to see it again. However, since it is apparently improvised I didn't give it a lower rating, as there were some genuinely funny moments, but these were few and far between. The improvisation made the film feel like it had a lack of direction. Robert Webb said this movie was a regret, and certainly his couple were the worst - the only joke was that they were nude. The other two couples were a little better, one wedding was based around musicals, the other around tennis. I felt that this film had so much more potential, considering the actors involved. While I wouldn't consider anyone's acting bad, I simply didn't find the film particularly funny, or romantic, and a lot of the characters were just too flat and not properly fleshed out (such as the gay wedding planners).

Delightful British mockumentary may not have all the sustainability and directional thrust of a vintage Guest film but still offers a refreshing and original venture into the popular up-and-coming genre of fake non-fiction. Taking place over several weeks, Confetti comically documents three very unique couples and their eccentric quests to win over a bridal magazine's "most original wedding" contest. With the help of an offbeat pace, these couples are transported to the surreal world of grossly irrelevant party planning, as imagined by two wacky staff party lovers.

It sounds like mildly stimulating entertainment, and for the most part it does play out as an elegant time waster, but this inventive mock-up must not be overlooked when viewing all of the subtle, quirky direction that creator Debbie Isitt employs to give this film some remarkable shades of sincerity against the absurd contest parody. Each of these fabulously improvised couples help make the wacky farce as eclectic as possible, and while everyone embraces their roles, some viewers will feel loud silences being awkwardly filled in by the hard working cast. At times, there is simply too much space for the improv comedy to truly take hold with this cast, but many subtle hints at brilliance lie beneath the half-great attempt, justifying a viewing to any open minded, mature yet irreverent adults.