The Wedding Diary
Adrian Teh
Even if you are not married, you would be familiar with at least one facet of the getting-hitched ritual – the wedding banquet.
The movie tries to draw you in by having Malaysian singer-actor A-niu (as Malaysian engineer Daniel working in Singapore) lament about his way-over-budget wedding.
But so what? Who cares when this is a wedding between two characters we barely know.
The romance between Daniel and Tina (Elanne Kwong) is unconvincing and the poor-boy-rich-girl set-up is merely an excuse to create some irritating drama and tension.
When Daniel tries to scrounge up cash for the dinner he cannot afford, he does the cliched and stupid thing by gambling it away at the casino.
It takes an accident in the last act to bring everyone together – except, suddenly, we seem to be watching a watch advertisement, one complete with sepia-toned flashbacks.
If you want to tell a tale about a watch, make it outrageously interesting the way Quentin Tarantino did in Pulp Fiction (1994). Don’t use it as an opportunity for outrageous product placement. Otherwise, the audience will just end up watching the clock.
(ST)